


Where the Moon Meets the Earth

by taegyungie



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Blood Magic, Folklore, M/M, Magic, Violence, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taegyungie/pseuds/taegyungie
Summary: John Seo, Crown Prince of Echovia, has heard the same stories since the day he was born. The actions of his ancestors before him and the history of the world he knows has become as much part of him as the Kingdom he so cherishes.Until he meets someone - a Child of the Moon, full of magic and starlight and inexhaustible goodness - who should not exist.Johnny has so much more to learn.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 46
Kudos: 96





	1. Do fear Mother Nature, for she may spit you out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a WIP I've been working on and thinking about for a loooong time. There are plot notes that add up to 23 chapters, but that might change as the story progresses, who knows. I'm currently about partway through Chapter 3, so once I'm ahead by that chapter, I'll post the next, so on and so on.
> 
> This world and these characters are very dear to me and I'm so excited to share it with you! This is my first endeavor into such intensive worldbuilding and writing lore and I'm a little anxious about how it will be received but! It is what it is.
> 
> Anyway. Without further ado, here is chapter 1 !! I hope you enjoy :)

The sun emerges from beyond the horizon, submerging the expanse beyond the cliffside in pale, pink light. A day born anew, a sigh of relief, as Johnny stands at the window of his sleeping quarters, curtains drawn and light pouring in like honey.

Exhaustion weighs on his eyelashes, tugs his shoulders like a heavy burden, yet he steps away from his window to dress. His chest feels congested with the sleep that calls to him, but he slips his tunic over his head and rubs at his eyes. It was him, after all, who had made up his mind that he would be going out this morning, despite all common sense.

The palace is a barren wasteland. Closed doors and silent corridors, save for the clicking of Johnny’s boots against marble and the billowing of his cloak that follows. On a morning like this, the morning after a full moon, no one in this palace will be stirring until much later in the day, even into the afternoon. Perhaps it’s a comfort of sorts, to rise and see the sun in its full glory, shining bright and proving its presence in the skies above their kingdom. For all the moonlight the land sees, it sees double the sunlight.

Unless one doesn’t count the nearly ever-present layer of dull gray clouds. 

Johnny leaves the palace walls, relieved he hadn’t seen a single soul in the halls, save for his own personal guard who merely sent him off with a nod and a knowing glint in his eye. He smiles to himself. He owes Jaehyun for this, he’s certain. 

Just as those who dwell within the palace are sleeping off the events of last night, the kingdom beyond the palace walls follow suit. The streets are clear and wide open except for a small handful of peasants whose duties cannot wait until the afternoon sun. Johnny nods curtly at them as he passes by and they greet him with the politeness most would when acknowledging royalty, tilting their chins down and quietly murmuring, “Good morning, Your Highness.”

It is a relief to him that the people who dwell in the land over which his father’s hand reaches do not run from him. He feels it would be a travesty, to feel unwelcome in one’s own kingdom.

The blacksmith’s is closed, which is to be expected. Yet, he stops at the door and knocks gently at the wood. He’d hate to disturb those who are sleeping upstairs.

Barely a second passes before the door is opening and he’s being greeted by the disgruntled face of the blacksmith’s son.

“Here’s your bow,  _ Your Highness,”  _ he spits with the bitterness only those who were awoken against their will could contain. “I put a new strap on your quiver, as well. For someone with a silver spoon like yours, you sure do wear out your weapons awfully fast, Johnny.”

“Even the most privileged need their exercise,” Johnny says with a smile, slinging his quiver over his shoulder and feeling out the weight of his bow in his palm. “Thank you, Renjun.”

Renjun grumbles, waving him off. “Quit asking me for favours before I find myself in trouble. Have fun out there, John.”

Johnny ducks his head, expressing his gratitude. “Sleep tight, Renjun.”

Renjun shuts the door in response. 

From the blacksmith’s shop, it isn’t far to reach the edge of town. It takes Johnny little to no time to reach the wide open clearing of the meadow that stands before the Enchanted Forest. The small team of hunters and gatherers are visible at the other side of the meadow, just before the woods begin, and Johnny skips into a jog to catch up to where they’re gathered to discuss today’s plan.

When Doyoung sees him from a distance, his expression visibly drops from this far away. Johnny cannot help but laugh a little at his friend’s face, rolling his eyes. 

“No,” the hunters’ captain says flatly as Johnny joins the group.

“I’m sorry?” Johnny teases.

Doyoung rolls his eyes. “No,  _ Your Highness.” _

Johnny adjusts the bowstring across his chest. “With the way everyone speaks to me, you’d think there isn’t a drop of blue in my blood.”

“Actually, Johnny, the reason I’m refusing you is  _ because  _ of your oh-so-very blue blood.” Someone within the group snickers behind their fist, and Doyoung remembers that they are not alone. He steers the two of them a few steps away from the group, lowers his voice when he says, “You should be sleeping.”

“I slept as much as I needed to.”

Doyoung looks incredulous. “If your father were to discover that I allowed his precious Crown Prince to join our hunt - on the morning after a full moon, no less - he’d not only have me hanged, he’d have me  _ demoted _ from my Captain’s position.”

“You really must do something about those priorities of yours.”

“How did you even get out here? Did you sneak past Jaehyun?” Doyoung asks, a wrinkle between his brows where they furrow together.

“He’d be offended to hear you assume anyone could sneak by him,” Johnny retorts, never one to miss an opportunity to be a thorn in Doyoung’s side. “Of course he let me through. Do you think Jaehyun could ever deny me this?”

Doyoung sighs, visibly at a crossroads. Johnny just watches him, waits for him to process this fight and how he lost it. Despite the clear sunlight through Johnny’s window less than an hour ago, the sky has cloaked itself in a thin layer of gray, making Doyoung’s skin and the earth around them appear dull and cold. With the winter behind them and summer ahead, the skies have been unyieldingly gray for weeks, thawing the earth and soaking the land in rainfall. It’s enough to make a grown man wallow, which is why Johnny feels like he especially needs to get out this morning.

“The same full moon was over you last night, too. Over everyone else,” Johnny reasons. He earns another sigh from Doyoung.

“Yes, but not everyone does as much as the Royal Family does,” Doyoung replies. He is far from wrong, the both of them know it, but still, Doyoung relents. “But who am I to deny you? Who is  _ anyone?”  _

Johnny beams back at him.

“We’ll keep it quick, this morning,” Doyoung announces as they join the group. “We won’t go too far. Everyone knows their course?” 

“Aye,” the group murmurs in response.

Johnny just watches his friend, completely professional and admirable as he stands before his squadron of hunters. “Good,” Doyoung says with a nod. “We’ll meet back here when the sun is a quarter-sky across. Be careful out there, I do beg, the ground is damp and dangerous and the forest is getting restless. Keep an eye out for suspicious magic.”

A few nods and affirmations, and soon everyone is going their separate ways. Johnny turns to make his leave when Doyoung’s voice halts him.

“And Johnny - if you die, I’ll kill you.”

Johnny can only smile, raising his hand in a mock salute. “Duly noted.”

\-----

The earth is silent beneath Johnny’s careful steps.

Gently, thoughtfully, he toes his way through the woods, keeping his gaze on high alert as he wanders and searches for a target. He allows the cool, damp air of early spring to kiss his skin, to creep up from beneath his cloak. He forgets, for a while, that he’s unyieldingly exhausted from last night’s prayers and ceremonies. 

Johnny lives a life of immaculate posture and stiff manners, a schedule of heavy training and exhausting Council meetings and daily duties. He’s so often restless, ready to kick at the walls with a need to relax his shoulders and stretch his limbs. Sparring with his brother and with his friends that will always let him win is just not enough to keep him satisfied.

So he hunts. Much to Doyoung’s dismay.

With all the peace and quiet it’s easy to forget that the land he walks in is dangerous territory. Frequently, Johnny has to remind himself to be cautious, to keep himself from wandering too deep in the Forest - every root, leaf, lump in the earth filled to the brim with a magic they just can’t understand, let alone harness. The Forest, clever and cunning in ways that can swallow a man up and never spit him back out. He glances to his left and sighs with relief at the sight of a red ribbon in a tree - a marker of charted, familiar land. 

He is so incredibly tired, and yet he feels as though he’s overflowing with content as he makes his way through the trails he creates, his arrow notched against his bow. He’ll have to find a way to make this up to Doyoung. Perhaps he’ll have the palace cooks make that lemon loaf that Doyoung loves so much.

A tree branch snaps somewhere off to his right. Johnny changes course on silent feet, in search of the sound. It only takes a handful of steps, a few steady breaths, before he finds the source - a deer, all alone, grazing some grass beneath her hooves. She is not very old, lean and nimble, her coat patchy in places from the change of seasons. Johnny grins. A perfect target.

The next step he takes has her perking up, looking around for danger. Johnny tucks himself behind a tree and waits, watches. She glances around for what feels like a century and Johnny counts the seconds between each breath he takes.

And then she takes off.

Johnny follows after her, careful to keep his steps light despite the pace. He listens for the rhythm of hooves against soil and stone, a steady beat for him to follow as he catches only glimpses of fur through the trees. He runs and he runs, and he does not realize how far he’s gone since he last saw red in the trees.

The sound of hooves begins to die as the sound of rippling water nears. Still, Johnny carries on, determined to make this hunt and refusing to return empty-handed. 

His ankle catches on a tree root and he plummets to the ground. “Ugh,” he groans as he picks himself back up and brushes the dirt from his cloak. “Where did you come from?”

The rippling of the river is louder than ever. He does not remember getting this close to the bank, but he shrugs it off as he picks his bow up off the ground and continues forward. It’s only another minute or so before he sees the beige fur of his game dash through some trees - except it’s trees on the other side of the river.

“How did you get over there?” Johnny asks with a frown. The deer emerges from the foliage, standing on the opposite bank. Looking at Johnny. As though mocking him.

He feels it, beneath his feet; the groaning of the forest surrounding him. It’s now that he realizes just how far he has ventured and he knows he should turn back. After all, the sun is nearly at quarter-sky and it’ll take him a while to find his way back. It only makes sense for him to turn around now.

Somehow, he notches his arrow, draws it back tight, and takes another step forward. And another, and another. Something within him is telling him to keep going, to make that shot, to earn his prize - something unignorable.

The ground sops below him as he inches his way closer to the water and closer to his goal. The deer continues to blink at him, unknowing yet somehow smug, and the water ripples with nearby rapids loudly and relentlessly. He steps up onto a stone, takes a steady breath, and readies himself to make his shot.

It is then that the forest decides it’s had enough of him and the rock he stands upon gives out under his weight, throwing Johnny into the violent current without a second thought.

Water rushes past him as he tries to collect himself. He flaps his arms and legs in an attempt to gain any momentum against the current to no avail, just wasting his energy as he’s dragged under the surface and up again. His heart is pounding and his lungs are burning and he just  _ cannot  _ get his head above water.

_ Pain.  _ A sharp, unforgiving pain shoots up his leg as he smashes his shin against - a rock? There’s no way to tell in these raging rapids, his body too cold to register most of the blows to his arms, his shoulders, his ribs, as he’s tossed around mercilessly and fiercely.

_ Thumping.  _ As his heart tries to keep up with his treading, his panic. His lungs constrict with emptiness and, still, he finds it within him to  _ scream.  _ It falls silent in such violent waters.

He prays to whatever Gods might hear him. His head is throbbing as it begs for oxygen.

There is no air around him when he takes a sopping breath.


	2. Beyond the bend in the river lie sights you've never seen before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny wakes. He is not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is here!
> 
> We get a little bit of backstory, some lore, some history. Oh, and we meet Taeyong :)
> 
> Enjoy!

Johnny first learns of tangible, unignorable pain when he is a mere seven years of age. He climbs, climbs, climbs one of the trees in one of the palace gardens - his favourite one, the one with the pond that’s shaped like the clouds - until he falls, falls, falls and hits the grass below him with a  _ thump  _ and a wail for his mother’s arms to pull him back to safety.

With an arm casted by the medic’s careful hands and tears dried by his mother’s thumbprints, he lies in bed with his head on her chest and sulks on behalf of a day of playing with his friends wasted. He listens to her steady heartbeat, allows her to run gentle fingers through his hair and hum a calming melody. Oh so quiet. Just for them to share.

It is late, at this time. The moon is shaped like the whites of a fingernail and his curtains are open to let in the starlight. He had believed his day had come to an end.

“Youngho,” his mother’s voice drifts into his ears. Age seven, a time when his name is still the one given to him at birth. The one assigned by the woman whose arms surround him. “What your father said to you, earlier - what he said isn’t necessarily wrong.”

The reminder makes Johnny’s little brows furrow. 

_ Don’t cry, boy,  _ his father had said to him as he was rushed off to the aid of the medic.  _ You’re to rule this kingdom one day. Don’t cry. Kings don’t cry. _

Unfair. Little Johnny - little Youngho - had found that so remarkably unfair. He had been hurt and had been broken and it was only fair that he cry. How else could he ease the pain that was filling his body until it overflowed into tears on his cheeks and sobs in his throat?

Gently, his mother’s voice carries on. “A King may not cry… but a King can still hurt.”

_ Can one?  _ He wants to ask.  _ Can anything hurt a King?  _

“The difference, my love,” her voice, so sweet, so gentle. Youngho’s young, foolish ears do not realize how much they will one day miss the sound. “The difference is how a King processes his pain - uses his pain.”

Youngho allows his eyes to drift shut, prepared for what is to come. A tale he has heard a million times in his very short life, one he knows backwards and forwards. History, he knows it to be, something important for his people to never forget.

“You already know the story,” his mother hums, at least self-aware. She still continues, “The story of the Moon Goddess and her gifts and her curses.”

He does know it - he knows it very well. Every hymn that their people sing on every full moon is littered with tidbits of the story, until they’re woven together to create one complete tale. His tutor teaches him about it in his lessons, every small battle, every great loss. His mother tells him before bed, sometimes, and still it makes Youngho gaze out his window with starry eyes and a chest full of admiration and wonder. A desire to one day be great like his ancestors before him.

He knows it so well, he anticipates every beat and moment of the tale as his mother recounts it, her voice cotton-soft and inviting slumber.

_ Wonder.  _ As a new type of person is brought into this earth. A mankind - almost - sent down to earth by the Moon Goddess, children of her glory and her power. 

Ilunae, they are named. Born from the moon and wired in their veins with magic and starlight.

_ Fear.  _ As the people of Echovia and other surrounding kingdoms come to discover just how much of the Moon Goddess’ favour her children hoard - far more favour than what any of the Gods in the heavens over their earth have ever offered to Echovia; offered any man. With all of their power and all of the love the sky has for them, surely they have the ability to ravage the earth and claim it as theirs - as if the sky was not enough.

_ Treachery. Tragedy. Terror. _

The world crumbles at the hands of the Moon Goddess herself - her tides risen and her gravity shifted. Echovia is struck by disaster after disaster, quaking lands and flooded streets. Then famine. Then plague.

Out of every God in the heavens, the Moon Goddess is easily the most feared. She always had been; the one who possesses power over the state of the earth. She shifts the tides and changes the weather, she keeps the ground flat and secure and the earth round. She can destroy the planet she watches so fondly without a second thought.

It’s why every full moon their people beg for her favour. Sacrifices are made and prayers are murmured, and shutters and blinds are sealed shut in an effort to keep her power - at her strongest and brightest - away from anywhere damage can be done.

It’s why his great grandfather, the King before the King before his father, had taken precautionary measures to protect their people from any dangers that may come.

It’s why war was waged on the Ilunae.

It’s why the Ilunae are no longer a threat - for they are no longer on this earth.

After all, wasn’t the sky enough?

“Don’t you see, child?” His mother’s sweet, sweet voice concludes. “A King may experience great loss, an injury of sorts - but a King must always learn from it and find protection before the next injury comes.”

A childish pout and furrow between brows. “But mama,” he whines, exhausted from the day, “my arm  _ hurts.” _

“Hmm,” his mother hums, petting the sides of his dark hair down flat. “And now you know not to fall out of trees.”

\-----

Johnny wakes with a violent gasp, sucking the air in so fast it burns in his lungs and wracks his body with coughs. His ribs hurt, screaming out with every convulsion. His head hurts, his eyes hurt, his arms hurt, his leg-

His leg is in  _ agony. _

Are his eyes still closed? He blinks. They are open, but he’s surrounded in darkness. 

His chest hurts from his coughing and his aching ribs, and it hurts from the racing in his chest as he is filled with panic and fear. Where is he? What’s happened to him? Why can’t he  _ move? _

It takes Johnny a moment, to gather his bearings and take note of his state. He’s supine, his arms at his sides, and he believes he cannot move due to the pain his body is in - no other reason. He is not trapped or tied down or buried. Rather, he’s pillowed in a soft pile of furs and pelts sheltered from the distant sound of rain.

His clothes are wet.

_ Oh, Gods, Oh, Gods,  _ he thinks to himself, his panicked voice echoing through his brain. It all rushes back to him like the rush of the water, a flood of events that led him to this pile of pelts in the darkness. His stupidity and his stubbornness and his competitiveness, and how the forest had tired of his presence.

The kingdom must think him dead.

Another thought occurs to him, a thought that hurts more than the image of a gravestone carved with his name - Doyoung will be blamed for this. Perhaps Jaehyun, too.

He opens his mouth, in an effort to cry out or to sob, but he hasn’t a voice to use. Instead, he just shakes, and he worries for his friends and the state of his kingdom. He isn't humble enough to deny that he is beloved by the people, and it hurts him to know they are grieving for him.

His father must be so disappointed. Another member of his family gone, just like that.

He tries to cry. He cannot. And as the initial rush of anxiety drains from his system, his exhaustion starts to creep in, seep into his bones and sink him further into his foreign bed.

Johnny’s eyes close on their own accord.

\-----

This time, when Johnny comes to, he knows the moment his eyes open. There is no sound of rain, this time, and with the absence of clouds, moonlight bleeds in from somewhere beyond Johnny’s eyeline. He tries to turn his head, to get a look at the place around him, but it takes too much effort and energy he just does not have.

What he can tell, however, is he’s surrounded by the jagged stone and shelter of a cave, and somewhere beyond the source of moonlight, he can hear the rippling of water. He isn’t far from the riverbed.

It’s cold, he realizes, his body wracking with shivers from the damp coolness, his clothes now dried after his fall, but his body still shuddering from the cold and the pain.

He registers another noise - not just the sound of the nearby river. It’s… a clanking, a fumbling. Sounds of a living thing moving around. And it’s close.

Johnny tries again, to turn his head, and this time he makes progress but he feels it as a shock of lightning all the way down his body, every nerve crying out against his actions. He doesn’t even feel it when a groan rises from his chest.

“Oh,” says a voice, distant beyond all the ringing in Johnny’s ears. “Oh, you’re awake. Oh, you poor thing.”

Hands are on him, gentle and exploratory. Light, elaborate touches that Johnny recognizes as somebody checking on his vitals, his wounds. He realizes his eyes are squeezed shut, his face all twisted up from discomfort, and he forces himself to relax enough to let his eyes drift open against the darkness. He exhales. He sees.

“That’s it,” says the voice again, clearer this time. It’s tender, soft, quiet, yet rough around the edges. Like it doesn’t get much use. “Relax, that’s good.”

Johnny, despite his vision returned to him, cannot see the person tending to him. The voice is coming from a distorted shadow, one that Johnny takes a moment to recognize as the silhouette of a cloak and hood. He can make out pale, paper thin wrists and knobby fingers, reaching to gently smooth down the crease between Johnny’s brow and brush a bruise on his cheek.

It stirs something pleasant in Johnny’s stomach - this tender, caring touch. It’s almost loving. Such a shock of contrast to everything else that Johnny’s battered body feels.

“Wh-” he begins to ask, curious who this person may be, but his voice comes out as barely a croak. His throat is  _ so dry.  _

“Water! Water, you need- let me get you some water,” says the shadow, fumbling over their words and rambling to themselves.

Johnny feels the heat around him depart as the shadow turns away. His violent shivers return.

He watches the cloaked figure approach a basin close to the mouth of the cave, swathed in silver light. Like this, with a backdrop of light from the entrance, Johnny can make out just how much of the person there is. Even hunched over the basin - delicate wrists and hands fumbling with some dishes - Johnny can see how small this person is. Thin and feeble and likely much shorter than himself.

Johnny’s eyelids are getting heavier by the moment, but he forces himself to remain awake. He’s too- curious. About this angel at his aide, about where he is. And he really,  _ really  _ needs a drink of water. 

It only takes a couple of paces for his caretaker to return to his side, carefully cradling the back of Johnny’s head with one hand, tilting the bowl of water to Johnny’s lips with the other.

“Careful. Small sips, now.” Johnny obeys. “Don’t want you going and drowning again.”

If Johnny had it in him, he’d laugh. 

“Look at you! Shivering yourself a thunderstorm, dear boy,” The person exclaims. The bowl is nearly empty, so Johnny lets them take the water away from his lips and rush about the cave some more. His eyes fall shut. Slumber calls out for him.

Warmth drapes over him. Johnny needn’t open his eyes to know it is furs that the shadow is tucking in around him.

The last thing Johnny registers is a quiet, “There, there,” before he’s departing from the waking world.

\-----

Again, Johnny’s eyes open, but this time he’s within his palace walls. 

Disoriented, he looks around, gathers his surroundings. A voice calls to him, reverberating in the tall corridor walls and the marble floors. Johnny spins around to see Jaehyun coming toward him - younger, a brighter smile on his face.

He realizes that Jaehyun isn’t calling him by his name. 

_ “Youngho!” _

Johnny looks down at himself. Thinner, in his youth. Draped in the ceremonial garments for one’s Coronation day.

“They’re ready for you, Youngho,” Jaehyun says. “Or, I guess I won’t be calling you that for much longer, huh?”

Johnny’s mouth just hangs open. Is this a memory? No, the edges are too fuzzy, the colours too pale and bright - he’s dreaming. He’s dreaming so vividly he’s sure if he reached out he’d be able to feel the silk of Jaehyun’s sash.

Strangely enough, he has enough mind to wonder why he’s dreaming of this - his last day as Youngho Seo, eldest son of the King; his first day as John Seo, Crown Prince of Echovia. Has it to do with his current stress, being considered a dead man? Has it to do with nothing at all, and he is merely dreaming of a day he remembers fondly?

Being thrusted back into his freshly nineteen-year-old body is jarring. Having lived the past six years in his ever changing, adapting body, he had never noticed the stark difference in the way it feels to carry himself. Sure, he may be dreaming, but he feels so light, so weightless. Can feel how lanky he is in his clothes.

His gaze wanders to the ceiling-high windows overlooking Echovia, all the way to the Enchanted Forest. The earth is covered in a pale dusting of snow, typical for early February. Johnny can practically smell the cold from inside.

When Jaehyun calls out to him again, it takes Johnny a moment to realize he’s being addressed. It’s been so terribly long since he’s answered to Youngho.

“Come now,” Jaehyun says, and Johnny just takes this opportunity to stare, to study. It’s a memory so vivid, as if he’s allowed to relive it once more, and with six years of experience on top of this day, Johnny can make all the comparisons he desires to how this day occurred to him the first time. “They’re waiting for you.”

Jaehyun looks so young here, so much brighter. The Jaehyun Johnny knows today is by no means a miserable person, but over the years he’s picked up so much responsibility to carry. He’s no longer Johnny’s companion and friend - he’s responsible for Johnny’s  _ life. _

_ I’m so sorry,  _ he tries to say aloud. But instead, he only nods, and falls into step behind Jaehyun to follow him out to the Grand Courtyard where the ceremony will take place.

So he cannot change anything. He is stuck in the vessel of his younger self, here to watch it all play out with older eyes. Trapped in his body, just as he is lying still in his bed of furs, shackled by the batters and breaks in his body.

Johnny  _ observes.  _ He pays more careful attention to the corridors around him, every shadow, every  _ clack _ of their boots against marble, things he could not pay any mind to when he did this the first time. Things that his nerves and his excitement kept him from noticing.

He’s never noticed before - the ceilings are so high and yet there isn’t a cobweb to be seen. Johnny’s never seen any of the maids up on ladders.

A distant thought makes him wonder if he’s dead. Perhaps he’s breathed his last breath and the Gods of death are taking him to the afterlife, disguised as Jaehyun with the false pretence of him reliving this day and he’s following them blindly to his eternal damnation or whatever awaits him. It’s a thought that makes him inwardly sigh in resignation.

He still had so much to see and do. What a pity.

Amongst all his daydreaming he doesn’t notice how long he’s just been going through the motions mechanically, until he’s ascending the stairs up to the platform where the High Council awaits him, his father seated haughtily in his throne. 

Out here, in the Grand Courtyard, the cold February air nips at the skin of his cheeks and plays with his hair. He shudders in his traditional garment, cursing his birthday for being in the brutal bite of winter when he could have been born in the summer like his younger brother, Minhyung. Surely, he will not be shivering like this when he comes of age to receive his Royal Name - the name that will make him more recognizable to the Gods. 

_ John,  _ he’s about to become. And he remembers, even back then, even back when he was ten and the name had been chosen by the High Council and the Vanguard Priest, thinking it sounded so painfully formal. In all his life, Youngho Seo had done everything in his power to be anything but stuffy. All to become a  _ John.  _

He never did understand why the Gods would only remember him if his name was one syllable less. 

As the Vanguard Priest drones out his scriptures and his blessings and all that stuff that Johnny hadn’t even paid attention to the first time, he looks out at the world around him. Out here in the Courtyard, beyond the platform he can see where the castle sits on the very edge of the cliff, overlooking the vast expanse of frozen water. On his other side, beyond the crowd of spectators - noblemen and lords and royalty from neighbouring kingdoms - lies all of Echovia. Such a stunning view, he has from up here, elevated on palace grounds and elevated on the platform on which he stands. He can see every snow-covered rooftop, every smoking chimney. All the winding streets that make up the home of his people.

His heart surges in his chest. He misses home.

A flash of blinding light startles him out of his daydreaming, and he stares up at the sky in wonder. The grey clouds that had hovered above them have parted to reveal a warm pink sky, and something - a ball of light so large and so bright - shoots across the atmosphere.

He looks around. No one else seems to notice it.

The ball of light, which Johnny can only assume is a star, reaches the horizon and the Vanguard Priest is interrupted by a deafening  _ BANG.  _ Again, no one notices, and the ceremony continues as if nothing has changed. This certainly didn’t happen on Johnny’s last day as Youngho.

With the crash and the flash of light, a crown is placed atop his head. He can’t even be bothered to watch as the audience lowers their heads before applause breaks out. He can only watch as warmth travels from where the star landed beyond the kingdom’s borders. He sees it, before he feels it, the way snow melts away and disappears in an outwards motion from the Forest until it reaches the Courtyard, seeps into his clothing, warms the flesh of his cheeks, and melts the icy expanse just past him.

Spring has arrived. So suddenly and so cathartically. Spring landed with the arrival of that fallen star.

\-----

The sharp intake of breath that Johnny takes upon waking makes his ribs cry out in agony. It’s still night, when he wakes up from his strange dream, or perhaps it’s night again. He can’t be sure how long he’s been out. Time seems to bleed together, as of late.

He blinks out the grogginess from his eyes, blinks away the brilliant, lucid images of his dream. He feels so disoriented, his brain still clinging to the memory of his dream like it had really just happened. Like he really was just Youngho again.

Warmth, like the spring that had arrived so suddenly, kisses the side of his body that isn’t tucked against the wall. He manages to tilt his head enough to see a fire burning a few feet away, closer to the mouth of the cave so the smoke has somewhere to go, his hooded saviour hunched over the flame.

Whatever it is that’s roasting, it smells  _ incredible.  _ Johnny is positively famished.

“Hello?” he tries to say, but it’s barely more than a whisper. He watches the person in robes a little longer, watches his hands meticulously fiddle with the rack the food is sitting on. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hello?”

His company is quick to react, turning around in their seat. The hood is still up, casting a shadow over their eyes, but the firelight reveals a sharp chin, square lips. The hint of a smile.

“Good morning!” They cheer. “Or I guess I should say good night… you’re up just in time, food’s almost ready.”

Johnny groans at the prospect of a meal. “Thank Gods.”

The laugh this stranger lets out is sweet and silly, complete with a quiet snort on the tail end. It makes Johnny smile, and his cheeks hurt with the movement.

“Here,” the boy says, getting up from where he was crouched by the fire. “Let me get you some water.”

“Please.”

While the boy fumbles about with the dishes at the basin, Johnny does his best to get a good look around the cave. With the light from the fire he can see the alcove they’re in is relatively shallow, just enough to shelter someone without concern of anything else living in deeper shadows. It looks lived in, well occupied, scattered with contraptions and woven baskets of things upon things. From the wall opposite him hang drying plants, clumps of garlic, jars upon jars stacked upon the divots in the stone creating makeshift shelves. He thinks they look awfully pretty, the way the firelight glimmers against their glass.

His company comes to his side, helping him drink the water from the bowl. Johnny frowns as he struggles to keep his head up, wondering how long this boy has been here, why he’s there. Whether he’s always been alone.

Johnny takes his last gulp far too eager and it forces a cough out of his chest. Gentle, fire-warmed hands rub at his chest and jaw, soothing. 

“Good?” The person asks once Johnny’s coughing subsides. “You’ve been asleep a long time. How are you feeling?”

Johnny takes a moment to mentally appraise every inch of himself. “Awful.”

Another quiet laugh. Something pleasant blooms in Johnny’s chest. “Cannot say I didn’t expect that answer. Hold on, let me grab you some dinner.”

Johnny has every intention of sitting himself up once his companion turns away to gather food from the fire. He really does. But his body simply will not move.

“I need- help.”

“Of course, of course,” says the hooded boy, rushing over with a plate of steaming food that he sets aside before using those warm, knobby hands to support the back of Johnny’s ribs. It takes plenty of effort, some groaning from the both of them, and then the boy is fluffing up one of the pelts to support his back. “Here, some rabbit and some mushrooms. You must be starving, you poor thing.”

Johnny accepts the plate that’s handed to him, cut and carved from a tree trunk, he notices. Now that he’s been moved from that one position, he feels a bit more mobile now, feels as though it’s a little easier to move. He grabs a piece of the roasted meat with his shaking fingers and brings it to his mouth.

“Oh my  _ Gods,”  _ he groans, it tastes so unbelievably good. He’s so hungry he can’t help but begin shovelling food into his mouth like it’s the last thing he’ll ever eat.

“Slow down, silly boy!” The person laughs from where he stands over the fire, serving himself a plate. “Don’t give yourself a stomachache. You’re already using up all my remedies, I don’t intend to waste that one on you, as well.”

Remarkably, Johnny has it in him to mock offence. “It wouldn’t be  _ wasted  _ on me, thank you very much.”

“Right, right.” His companion returns to his side, a smile peeking out from the shadows casted by his hood. “What’s your name, my dear? That is, if you even remember it.”

Johnny opens his mouth to answer, but something within him holds back. He frowns, blinking up at the person standing over him. 

He thinks about the dream he had just had - the one that is still bouncing around in his mind like a recent memory. He thinks about a life before he was John Seo, Crown Prince of Echovia.

And he thinks about how John Seo is as good as dead.

“Youngho,” he says around a mouthful of food. “My name is Youngho.”

The stranger smiles. “I’m Taeyong.”

_ Spectacular,  _ Johnny thinks,  _ what a spectacular name.  _

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Taeyong,” Johnny says. He does his best to keep up his act, his politeness and his courteousness. His voice, however - strained and shattered and a tell-all of the suffering that he’s currently experiencing - gives him away. “This dinner is phenomenal.”

Taeyong releases a low chuckle as he hunkers down to take a seat on the ground next to Johnny’s bed. “Likewise. Happy to provide.”

“I suppose-  _ ah, _ ” Johnny clutches at his ribs where a throbbing pierces through him, “I must thank you. I can’t imagine it was easy pulling… pulling me out of the water.”

He must have well and truly died, he thinks, for his body to be in as much pain as he is. He must have died and Taeyong miraculously brought him to life. He is so battered and torn apart, not an inch of his body spared from a beating, and yet here he sits, with this sweet boy in a black hood at his side.

_ Remedies,  _ Taeyong had said. And the abundance of jars and sage and stones scattered about the cave. It clicks all at once that Taeyong must be a witch of sorts, an understanding of the magic of the forest and the earth and the sky. 

Johnny had heard stories about witches and wizards and anything of the sort. It has been generations since there has been anyone in all of Echovia that could practice magic, but he knows there are few in neighbouring kingdoms that assist their medics and their astronomers. Likely plenty more living amongst the dark, misunderstood magic of the Enchanted Forest, that have her favour.

If Johnny had her favour, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

“I managed,” Taeyong says, humbly. “You frightened me when you washed up, not too far from here.”

“How- how long have I been…?”

Taeyong nods, his entire cloak moving with the motion. “It has been something akin to four days, now.” Johnny’s eyes widen in shock. “You’ve been asleep for most of it, but… It only makes sense.”

“I had quite a fall,” Johnny says, voice soft. “I am indebted to you.”

Even under the protection of his hood, Johnny could still read the sheepish expression on Taeyong’s face. A press of his lips and a hunch of his shoulders. “As if it was some sort of choice,” he says. “You washed up on shore barely clinging to life, Youngho. It was not as if I could have left you there.”

“Still,” Johnny says, taking careful note of the warmth in his belly at the sound of his old name from Taeyong’s lips “I shall find a way to repay you. I swear.”

Taeyong clicks his tongue before taking another mouthful of food, shifting in his seat on the floor. With the hand not holding the plate, he pulls his cloak tighter around himself. Johnny watches him as he chews his own food, curious.

“What’s with the hood?” He dares to ask.

As if without meaning to, Taeyong’s fist curls tighter in the fabric of his cloak. “Ah,” he says, voice quiet, “I get so terribly cold at night.”

Johnny’s cheeks once again ache as his mouth pulls into a smile. “And here I thought you were trying to keep up an air of mystery.” Then, he frowns, realization hitting him. “Do you need any of these furs?”

Taeyong is quick to shake his head, reaching out to hold Johnny’s hand in a placating manner. No longer warmed by the fire, his skin feels like ice. “No, I have some, don’t worry. The cloak helps when I’m up and about, the furs are for resting.”

He tries to meet Taeyong’s eyes, but it’s difficult to find them under the shadow of his hood. “If you say so.”

“I do say so,” Taeyong says. 

And the finality and firmness in which he says it reminds Johnny achingly of Doyoung. A hollow, resounding sadness settles into the center of his chest, and he just stares down at his plate as he continues to slowly chew on his meal.

He wishes he could apologize to Doyoung, who begrudgingly allowed him into the Forest. To Jaehyun, who watched him depart from his chambers. He cannot… it pains him to think about what may become of his friends, or anyone back home, for that matter. He left behind a mess, and the state of the world beyond this cave, up the river, and past the foliage is a mystery to him he may never solve.

His heart breaks. And instead of crying in front of Taeyong, he mumbles out a quiet, “I’m… awfully tired.”

“I have no doubt that you are,” Taeyong accepts his half-truth without qualms. He takes the empty plate from Johnny’ hands. “Do you need help laying back down?”

Johnny’s shattered heart swells at Taeyong’s infinite kindness. His brows remained furrowed when he mumbles out an, “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

“Wait!” Taeyong says, scattering about the cave on a mission. “Before you go to sleep- here.”

He uncaps one of the jars lining the opposite wall, digging into it with a spoon. When he pulls up a heaping spoonful, Johnny’s stomach churns at the sight of such a viscous slime, green and translucent and glittering with what looks like starlight, backlit by the fire. All the way from here, Johnny can smell the potent scent of herbs and something he can’t quite put his finger on - magic, perhaps.

“This is a cure-all. You haven’t been awake long enough for me to feed you any,” Taeyong says as he comes closer. His voice is so gentle and so caring that Johnny finds he doesn’t have it in him to put up a fight. He opens his mouth and watches the way Taeyong’s mouth quirks up. “It tastes awful, but it should help soothe your aches a bit.”

Carefully, Taeyong feeds Johnny the spoonful, and Johnny cannot fight the flinch that takes over his body at the taste. He decides that magic is a bitter flavour in the back of the throat, and he isn’t so sure that he wants to get used to it.

When Taeyong pulls away, it’s with a smile. Johnny says, “Thank you,” and he means it.

He’d be dead without Taeyong. He wishes he could send Taeyong to save his friends at home.

“Get some rest, Youngho.”

A whisper-soft demand, fuzzy around the edges with its sweetness and spoken like gospel from someone who could only care the most. It soothes Johnny, in ways that he thinks the cure-all cannot, and fills his belly with something warm. It’s a pleasant feeling, being so unconditionally cared for by a boy who doesn’t even  _ really  _ know his name, while the rest of him is heavy with the guilt of what calamity he caused back home.

The warmth in his belly and the weight of his limbs is enough to help him fall asleep quickly. He has just enough mind, before he slips completely under, to wonder if he would have a strange dream, again. Or if the last one was just the higher powers that be trying to tell him something.

And it appears as though the last dream was some sort of fluke - or maybe even a sign - because despite his heavy heart and fear-stricken thoughts, he sleeps so soundly that when he opens his eyes and sees sunlight, he feels so groggy and disoriented, like he’s still halfway to his subconscious.

_ Sunlight.  _ He hasn’t seen sunlight in so long, and here he lies, swathed with the warm, coral light of sundown. The cave must be West-facing, because the setting sunlight pours in like viscous syrup, kissing every corner and every crevice, the hollows of Johnny’s eyelids.

He looks down at himself, at the blanket that rests halfway up his torso and has been kicked off of his feet, his shirt unbuttoned and lying limp at his sides. He is covered in makeshift bandages, made from birch bark or leaves or rice paper, his skin all spotted and tinted with the hundred different colours of whatever solvents Taeyong has been slathering on his injuries. Spotted and tinted with the hundred thousand bruises that seem to be sourced from within him.

His right shin is wrapped up tight in something elastic and firm. It’s the most heavily bandaged part of his body, and he can see through the bandages just how much he’d bled there. Even more than his bruise-mottled and clearly broken ribs.

It baffles him that his body is so unbelievably  _ destroyed,  _ marked with the remnants of a beating so brutal he should be at the bottom of the river, and yet here he is, awake, able to sit up on his own, less than a week after gaining his injuries.

_ Magic,  _ he figures,  _ it’s a dangerously powerful thing. _

He blinks away the last of his sleepiness, invites the sunlight in to warm him to his very core. The sound of the rippling river not far away is such a beautiful, soothing sound, despite the dangers that Johnny knows lie beneath it. 

“Taeyong?” He wonders where he is. Just barely, underneath the sound of the river, he can hear shuffling about not far from beyond the cave. The snap of tree branches beneath feet. “Taeyong?”

Johnny receives no response, and it ignites in him his fight-or-flight instincts. He worries - has Taeyong been hurt? Did some beast come and attack him? Did the forest finally tire of him, too? Johnny knows first hand just how dangerous the capricious personality of the Forest’s heart can be, and Johnny spirals with the fear that something may have happened to his dear saviour.

It’s built within his bones, he figures, this need to protect at all costs.

“Tae-” he tries again, but in his effort to get himself up from his sickbed, he loses the air in his lungs to cry out. He moves languidly, sluggishly, like he’s moving underwater, until his feet reach the cold stone floor. He realizes his pants have been torn all the way up to the knees, in order to gain access to his injured legs.

Despite knowing how much it will hurt, Johnny is determined to get up and find Taeyong, just to know he’s safe. His mind will not rest until he is assured of Taeyong’s well-being, and it is worth every strenuous shift of muscles, every zing of pain that slices through his veins.

He stands. His leg must be much worse for wear than he thought, because he finds his voice again just long enough to cry out as he collapses to the unforgiving stone and dirt of the cave floor.

The sound of racing footsteps. Johnny cannot look up from the ground, where he’s using shaking arms to hold his chest up from the ground. A drop of salty tears hits the stone beneath him.

“Youngho!” Calls out Taeyong’s voice. It’s near.

Johnny smiles. “You’re alright.”

“Of bloody course I’m alright, wh- Youngho, what were you thinking?”

There are hands on him, now, shaky in their panic but firm in their grip. Taeyong grunts with the effort of prying Johnny from the floor, and though Johnny tries his hardest, he knows he isn’t much help at all. 

He’s still crying as Taeyong eventually rights him enough to get him sitting on his rear, his leg throbbing with the intensity of a million suns as he stretches it out beneath him. He watches the blood stain on his bandaged shin expand as Taeyong’s restless hands find purchase on his face, thumbing the tears off his cheeks.

Johnny looks up, a  _ thank-you  _ on his tongue, but when he meets Taeyong’s eyes his mouth hangs open uselessly.

He must be mistaken. This mustn’t be what Johnny thinks it is. But it’s hard to deny what’s so blatantly in front of him, hovering over him with a furrow in his brow and a tremor in his attending hands. 

Johnny’s gaze is met with hair whiter than even Taeyong’s skin, overgrown and brushing his shoulders, glowing around the edges with the sunset behind him. His eyes, blacker than the sky at midnight, a galaxies’ worth of stars contained behind his irises. 

A beauty so great, so ethereal, it cannot be of this earth.

Taeyong should have died a hundred years ago. Just like all the Ilunae did.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always:
> 
> [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/bbhsteeth/) | [CuriousCat](https://www.curiouscat.me/bbhsteeth/) | [Ko-Fi](https://www.ko-fi.com/laurenandrea/)


	3. There's quiet in the volume of a splash in the river or the eye of a storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life is peaceful, in this corner of the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 is coming a little late, but it also ended up being... a lot longer than I anticipated. But, I mean, that's just how I operate.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! I have to go out of town for work for a couple days, so hopefully I'll get some downtime at my hotel so I can make some progress on chapter 4 !! Fingers crossed.

“Youngho, we have to get you off the ground.”

“You can’t be…”

“Come on,” Taeyong says, tucking his hands under Johnny’s armpits. “Up.”

“Taeyong, how are you alive?”

Taeyong halts, then, drops his arms to his sides. He’s crouched down before Johnny, sitting back on his heels, and with the sunlight pouring in from behind him, he casts a shadow over nearly all of Johnny’s body, splayed out against the cave wall with his legs on either side of Taeyong’s. The… Ilunae, an actual breathing  _ Ilunae _ , just stares at Johnny for a moment. He pinches his brows together and presses his lips in a straight line and Johnny just looks at him and waits.

“You know, I could ask you the same thing, Youngho.”

“I have an answer,” Johnny responds. His body is still crying out from his fall, from this movement, but it’s dulled down and diluted by the curiosity that overcomes him. “I am alive because of you. Now you tell me why you are.”

There is a demand in his voice, a sense of finality and authority that comes naturally to those who are raised to rule a kingdom, but it’s weakened by his fragility and his pain. There’s a shallowness in his lungs and a tautness in his throat and it’s audible in his voice. Still, he holds Taeyong’s gaze with an immovable confidence.

Taeyong is so, unbelievably, indescribably  _ beautiful.  _ Johnny, in his life, has seen many beautiful faces on beautiful people. Royalty and nobles all groomed and pampered and spoiled to perfection. He’s seen porcelain skin and shiny hair and immaculate clothing. But he has never before in all his years seen something quite like a creature who has quite literally fallen from the heavens.

A blink, a flutter of feathery lashes around galaxy-deep eyes, and Taeyong’s hardened expression melts a fraction. Resignation. “Not- all of us were killed.”

Johnny’s brows furrow together. “But… the Ilunae race has been wiped out for about a hundred years-”

“Yes, well-” Taeyong cuts in with a shake of his head. He looks down at his hands in his lap with his pause, pensive. Johnny counts the seconds between his breaths to distract himself from the throbbing in his leg. “There weren’t enough of us left to be detected. To even be considered a race, anymore.”

Worse than his leg, his ribs, his body, Johnny’s heart  _ aches.  _ “The horrors you must have seen.”

Taeyong is silent. He frowns down at his knuckles, wound together and fidgeting callously in his lap, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

Johnny can feel his own expression soften. “Unless- you were not there.”

“I was.”

_ Oh.  _ Johnny takes a moment to take a deep, grounding breath. “So you are- what? One hundred and twenty years old?”

That puts a small smile on Taeyong’s face, and for the first time in minutes, their eyes meet. Johnny wonders, if he took the time, if he could count the stars contained within those eyes of his. 

“I lost count a while ago,” Taeyong says. “But, yes, something like that.”

More than just physically, Johnny is floored. All his life, the thousand-or-so times he’s heard the story, he had never known that the Children of the Moon were immortal. Though, he figures, they had not lived long enough for the rest of the world to find out.

“Imagine,” Johnny says, voice a little distant like his wandering thoughts, “losing count of how many years you live on this earth. I have so many questions.”

Taeyong sighs, a resigned, amused sound. “Can we at least get you back in bed, first?”

Johnny purses his lips together and concedes with a nod. As Taeyong is wrapping careful arms around Johnnys ribs, under his arms, Johnny wonders if maybe he should  _ fear  _ Taeyong. After all, Taeyong is a person with magic and power woven right into his DNA, so much power that Johnny’s ancestors were under constant threat by Taeyong’s kind’s mere existence. Taeyong, for lack of a better word, is the enemy.

However, as Taeyong releases a grunt at the effort of lifting him off the ground, Johnny thinks that Taeyong is the last person on earth who could ever harm him. Despite Johnny putting in his best effort to carry his weight, Taeyong struggles with the weight of him, flushing red high on his cheeks and baring his teeth. He looks… adorable. Johnny cannot think of a better word to describe him. Adorable. Harmless.

And that loneliness he wears like a sweater makes sense, now. It has become a part of Taeyong, after all these years. 

Johnny, once he gets his left foot under him - the one under his less-injured leg - tries to lean all of his weight away from Taeyong’s small frame. “Gods,” Johnny cusses under his breath. “My leg fucking  _ hurts.” _

Taeyong splays his hand against Johnny’s stomach as he urges him toward the bed of furs. “Your Tibia is broken, Youngho, of course it hurts.”

“My-  _ fuck,”  _ Johnny groans as he collapses into bed, his body effectively exhausted from the effort of any movement at all. He normally has a much more polite mouth than this, but he just can’t help it right now. He  _ hurts.  _

Taeyong stands over him with a frown for a moment, his hands floating in the air between them like he doesn’t know what to do, where to touch. Johnny holds a hand out, stopping Taeyong from fussing any further as he squirms around until he finds a more comfortable position. Taeyong straightens his back out with a huff, turning on his feet to grab a stool from next to the fire. He pulls it up next to Johnny’s bed, just as Johnny settles in comfortably, and sits with his elbows on his knees and his eyebrows knit together.

Johnny just looks back at him for a long moment, sadistically savouring the nervousness in the line of Taeyong’s shoulders. “So.”

Taeyong sighs so enormously, his whole body deflates with it. “Ask me your questions, Youngho.”

Another moment. Johnny taps his fingers against his thigh, thinking of where to start. He has a hundred year’s worth of life to ask about.

“What was life like?” Johnny starts. “Before the war, before it all.”

“War?” Taeyong asks, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead. “Is that what they’re calling it?”

Johnny frowns. “What do you mean-”

“Life was… peaceful. I spent most of the years before the- the  _ war  _ learning and adapting.”

“Were you born a baby?”

“Not in a physical sense,” Taeyong says. “We were all sent down in young, healthy bodies, but with no knowledge of the world around us. We could communicate and we could walk and we knew the very basics but… we had to develop a lifestyle, a culture, a home.”

“I was never taught anything about the Ilunae,” Johnny says. “Except that they were all…” he trails off, “from the war.”

“I remember little. It was a very long time ago, you know.”

Johnny knows.

“I just remember being happy. My very dear brother and I had a medicinal shop together, I know that much. We made, you know-” he gestures behind himself at the jars of solvents and potions against the wall “-and life was… fine. Peaceful.”

“Your brother, did he-”

Taeyong steadies Johnny with a firm, practiced, bricked-off gaze. “All of my siblings died that fateful night and the days that followed. What few of us remained slowly died off as the years passed.”

If Johnny’s heart cries out at the words, then surely Taeyong is feeling this heartbreak tenfold. Beyond the carefully constructed mask that Taeyong wears, the firm lines of his perfect face, the dark, lifeless look in his eyes, Johnny can see it. The sadness that threatens to tug on all of his corners and drag them down. 

Johnny’s body has been beaten and bruised, every inch of him aches and cries and groans. But he knows full well that he’s putting Taeyong through a worse pain. A pain that has lingered for a century.

“Then I have just one more question,” Johnny says. Then, voice as soft and tender as the way Taeyong touched him when he first came to, “How long have you been alone?”

Something flits across Taeyong’s features, the smallest twitch in his hardened expression, and then Taeyong drops his gaze to watch his fidgeting fingers. Johnny watches the tension slowly bleed out of his shoulders, watches him shrink in his seat.

“The last of us refugees succumbed to the winter…” Taeyong pauses to take a long, sturdy breath. His voice is whisper-soft, like the subtle change of the colour of the sunlight that’s been shrinking over the horizon. “Something close to fifteen years ago.”

“Fifteen years?!” Johnny asks, voice so loud compared to the atmosphere that had settled around them. “You’ve been alone- Taeyong!”

Taeyong, all things considered, has the gall to  _ roll his eyes  _ at Johnny. “Don’t you dare lay there and pity me or worry about me. Worrying is my responsibility.”

Johnny gapes as Taeyong shoots up from his seat and drags his stool back to its rightful place. “Wh- then what’s my responsibility?”

“Getting better,” Taeyong says, leaving no room for debate. 

Taeyong puffs up his chest, kicking the stool into place at the firepit. Johnny just watches him, the lines of his shoulders - tense, deceptively thin and surprisingly strong. He moves with the practice and the details of a man who’s been on his own for a long, long time. Every bend in his joints and scrape of his feet against stone is that of someone who has to take care of himself, with no one else to watch.

No wonder Taeyong mumbles to himself a lot. Until Johnny, he himself was his only company.

“Now, I was peacefully going about my evening gathering the traps from today before I was so rudely interrupted by someone’s hero complex-”

“Ouch-”

“So I shall continue that, now.” Taeyong spins around from where he stands at the mouth of the cave. He gives Johnny a pleasant, amused smile. Johnny feels his chest deflate at the knowledge that Taeyong isn’t  _ truly  _ mad at him. “I’ll be back in a bit to make dinner and refresh your bandages. Don’t try to get up from that bed again.”

Johnny looks down at his aching leg. “You have my word.”

Taeyong smiles again, and Johnny watches as the modest pink sunlight reflects off his silver-white hair as he turns and leaves, his open cloak billowing behind him.

\-----

“How does it feel?”

Johnny squeezes his eyebrows together, tries to watch Taeyong’s face and not where Taeyong is pushing at his calf from either side, testing its strength. He clenches his jaw, takes a steadying breath. Tries not to sound too uncomfortable when he says, “not  _ horrible.” _

Taeyong nods, letting go of his leg. “Not horrible is good,” he says, petting down the scar that squiggles down from Johnny’s knee to his ankle. “It is arguably better than horrible.”

“Most would say so,” Johnny quips back. He releases a tight breath. “Should I- start exercising it?”

Taeyong nods, tight-lipped, as he pushes back from Johnny’s bedside. “Gently, yes. You’ll never get better if you just lie there and wallow.”

“Flattered you think so highly of me.”

“Here,” Taeyong says, holding out a large, sturdy stick. “I found this earlier, it’s perfect to use as a walking stick.” He taps it against the stone and dirt ground twice. “It’ll help take the weight off your leg, when I’m not around to hold you up.”

Johnny smiles, swinging his legs over the edge of the pile of furs. He wiggles his toes into the ground, his face pinching up at the slight sting that shoots up his right leg. It’s slight, no more than mere discomfort, and Johnny can feel that his body is ready for him to begin moving around a little more.

It leaves Johnny baffled, confused, and a little bit impressed that he’s healing as quickly as he is. He’s been in Taeyong’s care for barely a week, yet his bruises are shrinking and dimming to a demure hue of yellow-ish green - except the bruises in the worst parts of him. His knees, his ribs, and his shoulders are still in the worst of shape, dark, harsh bruises that appear bone-deep; And most likely are. His leg was  _ broken,  _ and yet with little more than some tensor bandages and sickly smelling serums, he’s able to put weight on it once again, albeit slight.

He reaches for the cup of tonic that Taeyong had brought out for him. It’s apparently a draught to combat pain and discomfort, and it came with a warning that it might make him feel a little bit  _ floaty and dozy,  _ as Taeyong had put it. Johnny thinks the high may be worth it, to quell the pain of finally moving. Even if he does pinch his face up at the sour taste.

Taeyong reaches out, wrapping cold fingers around Johnny’s biceps. “Let’s get you up,” he says, voice quiet. “Let you see what life’s like outside this cave.”

Johnny smiles and allows Taeyong to struggle with his weight a moment. He likes to watch Taeyong at times like these - he’s so determined and unyielding. Even tasks he knows he is not capable of, he still puts in relentless effort, and it amuses Johnny to see that furrow in his brow and that flush on his temples.

The pleased look on Taeyong’s face when Johnny finally helps to lift himself up off the bed makes Johnny’s smile spread even wider. “Just when I was getting used to this cave.”

“I assure you there are-  _ hng  _ \- much more interesting things to see,” Taeyong says, grunting with the exertion of holding Johnny’s weight. “Here, Youngho.”

Johnny grabs the walking stick from Taeyong’s hand. It takes him a moment to right himself, to find his balance. He hasn’t stood in a few days, and his body is weak from the bedrest just as much as his injuries. Taeyong steadies him with gentle hands around his waist, and for a moment Johnny feels…  _ shy  _ about his unbuttoned shirt.

At full height - for the first time in what feels like ages - he has to tilt his chin down to meet Taeyong’s eyes. “After you.”

Taeyong’s smile is earth-shattering.

Step by careful step, Johnny makes his way toward the mouth of the cave. He keeps his walking stick tight, gripping with all his might. It’s uncomfortable, verging on painful, but all it takes is for Johnny to grit his teeth together and carry on. Taeyong stays by his side, fingers wrapped around Johnny’s waist and curled into the back of his shirt, through every small step. Johnny can see it, the earth beyond the mouth of the cave, and it takes him only a few more steps before he’s swathed in cool sunlight.

Cool, because of course the sky is coated with gray. The sky wears overcast like Taeyong wears his cloak - a safety net of sorts, a constant. 

Besides the grayness and the dullness, however, the small clearing around them is spectacularly gorgeous. Large, twisting trees act as a border around them, hills and stones and stumps. Wildflowers white as Taeyong’s hair. 

“Here, let’s get you seated,” Taeyong says, snapping Johnny out of his wonderment and steering him toward a stump not far from the riverbed. 

Once seated and the groaning has subsided, Johnny takes a moment to breathe in the fresh air. He giggles at the way the grass feels between his toes.

“Pretty out here,” Johnny says, voice a tad distant with his distraction, too much to take in at once. He looks up and meets Taeyong’s eyes, and they look down at him with such an astounding gentleness that it takes Johnny’s breath away. “Almost enough to forget that this forest tried to kill me.”

Taeyong’s responding smile is crooked. “Don’t take it too personally,” he says as he raises a hand to brush Johnny’s hair back and out of his eyes, “She even gets tired of  _ me  _ sometimes.”

“Oh?” Johnny quirks his head to the side. “I imagined you would have her favour, being in touch with magic and all.”

Taeyong’s hands have relocated to Johnny’s shoulders. It’s intimate, the way he stands between Johnny’s legs, forcing him to tilt his head back just to see his face. Yet, Johnny feels no need to draw back from it - he figures Taeyong must be a bit touch-starved, after over a decade on his own.

“I do,” Taeyong’s voice is sweet, Johnny thinks. “Still, she gets restless if I’m in one place for too long.”

“How long have you been here?”

Another one of those soft, sweet smiles. Another finger through Johnny’s hair. “A while.”

Johnny’s eyes drift shut.

“Look at you,” Taeyong snorts. “Silly boy.”

He opens his eyes when Taeyong steps out of his space, replacing warmth with the coldness of a foggy spring day. He watches Taeyong squat down to grab something from the ground, something that Johnny cannot see, before jumping back up and returning to the cave. He moves swiftly, like a man with a mission, and Johnny isn’t paying any real attention as he watches Taeyong gather some things into a tiny jar, some smoke, some string, some oil, who knows. He just watches it all happen, and only pays attention to the focussed press of Taeyong’s lips, the way he mutters to himself under his breath.

“Here,” Taeyong says, holding out the little jar, sealed with a cork and melted wax. Johnny opens his palm, and Taeyong uses his hand to close Johnny’s fist around the jar. “There is a protection spell in there. Hold it close to you while I’m gone.”

Johnny can feel his expression drop. “Where are you going?”

Taeyong presses Johnny’s closed fist into Johnny’s chest. “I need to check the traps, gather a few things for lunch. And I’m nearly out of witch hazel.”

“You need witch hazel that bad?”

“Quit pouting,” Taeyong’s voice is lilted with amusement. Johnny realizes he is, in fact, pouting. “It is used in just about every healing remedy I know. Stay here, listen to the birds, enjoy the- clouds. I was going to say sunshine.”

Johnny only laughs in response.

“I’ll be back before you know it, Youngho.”

As Taeyong leaves his side, Johnny closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of Taeyong’s footsteps falling quieter and quieter the further away he wanders. He listens to the ripple of the river and feels the blanketed sunlight on his face.

He wonders how far down the river he had been carried. Just how far away he is from home.

\-----

It is becoming increasingly more frequent that the sun makes a proud appearance in the sky above them. As days melt into weeks, the sun becomes less and less shy, and Johnny enjoys his afternoons out on the clearing with Taeyong, despite still not being able to do much.

This afternoon falls under such category, warm and bright like the smile Taeyong wears when he announces food is ready. Johnny sits on his tree stump by the riverbed, his walking stick laying at his right.

He’s only half focussing on the branch he’s whittling to a point in his lap. Taeyong had found his bow washed up a few days ago, damaged but fixable, and Johnny has been spending the better part of his time putting it back together and whittling himself some new arrows. He has splinters and blisters in all the crooks of his fingers, but in the end it’s worth it. Once his leg is healed enough that he needn’t a stick for support, he’ll be able to go hunt, catch some larger game than the small animals that Taeyong catches in his traps. 

He’s only half focussing on the branch he’s whittling to a point in his lap, because Taeyong is just so amusing to watch. He’s waded out into the river, his worn linen pants rolled up to his knees, to check on the fish nets and traps. It cracks Johnny up to see a creature as elegant as Taeyong reduced to a klutz with the raging current pushing at his calves.

A cloakless Taeyong is not only rare, but fascinating. Johnny sits on his stump and watches him, so wiry and slender in his faded, repurposed over and over again clothing. He still holds a hint of disbelief close to his chest, sometimes, observing Taeyong in moments like these - the way his silvery hair catches the sunlight, his ghastly pale skin and a face and body seemingly crafted from the finest of marble. Something like this simply cannot exist, Johnny often thinks to himself. He wonders if maybe he’s made Taeyong all up.

Just the thought of an Ilunae being alive and in his presence is absurd enough.

There’s a splash and a celebratory shout, and Johnny looks up to see Taeyong triumphantly holding a wiggling pickerel in the air. Johnny laughs at the wide grin on Taeyong’s face, the way he’s struggling against the force of the fish’s convulsions. It’s funny, endearing, and Johnny feels a tug somewhere behind his ribs.

He really likes Taeyong. Not just because Taeyong saved his life, not just because he’s his only company and they’re something like stuck together. Taeyong is strange and fascinating and filled to the brim with care and kindness. He tends to mutter about things Johnny hasn’t a clue about and he talks to the world around him like it will reply, and it’s all so… charming. Endearing. Taeyong is sweet, and Johnny is lucky to have been found by him in more ways than one.

Johnny bends down to grab his walking stick when he notices that Taeyong is splashing toward him, the water lapping at his bared calves. He hobbles against his support until he’s at the shore, and Taeyong hands Johnny the fish to put in the bucket they have aside. 

“You’re getting much more mobile on that thing,” Taeyong notes with a smile, rolling up the sleeves of his worn-thin, oversized tunic. “I figure it will not be much longer before you no longer need it.”

Johnny smiles as he drops the fish in the wooden bucket and turns back around. “I hope so. About time I start pulling my weight around here.”

“Right, of course,” Taeyong says, a tint of sarcasm in his tone as he wades backwards through the water, “can’t remain entirely useless, can we?”

Johnny rolls his eyes, hunkering back down onto his stump. “Please. Don’t act as if you don’t enjoy the company.”

He collects his task of whittling arrows back into his hands, but instead of falling back into the motions of it, he just stares down at his hands. There’s filth under his fingernails and healing cracks in his knuckles. His strong, capable hands that have ensured that despite the handmaidens and assistants and advisors, Johnny has never needed taken care of. Being diligent and self-reliant is the cornerstone of his entire personality, his philosophy, who he  _ is.  _ And he’s been reduced to a useless lump on a log, here just to eat what little of Taeyong’s rations he has and use up all his medicine.

Johnny hates feeling useless. He wants to be back on his feet and helping out, especially after all that Taeyong has done for him.

He wonders, sometimes, in the cold darkness of night, how far he is from home and how easy it would be to return. He knows, deep down, that he cannot remain here with Taeyong forever - he has an entire Kingdom waiting for him up this river, a Kingdom he is destined to one day rule. 

In his fantasies, he takes Taeyong with him, gives him a comfortable home in Echovia, and he is welcomed with open, warm arms. When Johnny pictures returning home, Taeyong at his side, everyone celebrates Taeyong’s existence, fascinated and enamoured by him - much like Johnny is, himself. If Johnny feels as though he cannot leave Taeyong to remain alone after all this time, Taeyong will come with him, and everything will be fine.

Though, Johnny fully understands that Taeyong would be met with nothing but confusion, fear, and contempt.

Johnny places the flat of the blade against the branch and swipes, peeling off a piece of the bark as he goes. “I’ll get back on my feet,” he calls out, loud enough that Taeyong can hear him from where he stands knee-deep in the river. “I’ll get out there and I’ll catch you the biggest buck you’ve ever seen. And we will feast.”

Taeyong brings a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun as he looks back at Johnny. The shadow cast over his face reveals nothing but his honest smile. Johnny thinks it looks awfully familiar.

“I’ll hold you to it, Youngho.”

\-----

It is usually around mid-afternoon that Johnny begins to get exceptionally sore.

The walking stick has remained balanced against the cave wall for a few days, now. He hobbles, but Johnny can move on his own, can hold his own weight. He, still, remains weak enough that he cannot venture out on his own, especially in an area of this forest he is unfamiliar with. But, at least, he is able to join Taeyong in gathering the traps, harvesting growth that can be used for either food or magic. He carries Taeyong’s large, woven, bag that seems to be endless in how much it can carry. Johnny swears there’s some different world somewhere at the bottom of the bag, somewhere that can carry everything they throw in it.

He’s mobile, but his leg still gets sore sometime around mid-day. The rest of his body begins to ache with the effort to carry the weight he cannot put on his leg. And then he’s hobbling painfully back to camp, still refusing to let Taeyong take the heavy bag from across his back.

Today, in the heat of a spring that creeps closer to summer, he’s just beginning to reach that point where his leg is complaining against every move he makes. He clenches his jaw, refuses to acknowledge it, and waddles up to where Taeyong is trying to reach choke cherries high in a tree.

Johnny reaches up, grabs the branch bountiful with the berries, and pulls it down to where Taeyong can reach.

He receives an incredulous, albeit grateful, look. 

“What did you ever do without me?” Johnny asks, smug.

Taeyong rolls his eyes. “Wait for the lower branches to grow their berries back,” he answers. “I must admit that this is more efficient.”

Johnny beams wider than the clearing behind them.

“Don’t act so proud,” Taeyong says, “it’s unbecoming. Here, open the bag.”

Johnny obliges, allowing Taeyong to drop the handful of berries in along with the other produce harvested today. “Just happy to help,” Johnny says, his tone implying that he does not at all mean it - when in actuality, he really, really does. He is not exaggerating when he says he owes Taeyong his entire life, he would do anything for him. As both a saviour and a friend.

“Right,” Taeyong deadpans, sifting through the bag. He sighs. “I think we’re good for today. Let’s head back and skin these squirrels.”

Johnny shifts the shoulder that their game is slung over. He nods his affirmation before turning to fall into step with Taeyong.

Taeyong slows his steps to remain at Johnny’s side, which is sweet and thoughtful. They arrive at camp shortly, and Johnny leaves Taeyong with their game before he heads into the cave to sort their gatherings. 

He likes this part of their routine. Unlike Taeyong, Johnny has not had the chance to learn the process of skinning and cleaning meat to cook, so it’s become his duty to go through everything they gather and put them away in their respective places. There’s something therapeutic about putting things where they belong, filling pretty glass jars with so many colours and textures. Hanging plants to dry, grinding berries into juice. It provides a kind of satisfaction Johnny had never considered to be a thing.

Time passes, Johnny lost in his task, and eventually there is the silhouette of Taeyong standing between the sunlight and the mouth of the cave. “The meat is cleaned. Let’s go get cleaned up ourselves, yeah?”

Johnny considers the last time he and Taeyong had head down the river to bathe and wash their clothes. He decides it’s been a little too long. “Sure.” 

Taeyong grabs the basket that holds the lotions and solvents he makes from scratch - something Johnny finds fascinating and impressive - and they fall into step together along the edge of the river, until they find that tiny clearing where the river’s current softens and the rocks that surround them are perfect for washing and drying their clothes.

Their clothes are a little worse for wear. Johnny’s are ruined from his fall. Taeyong’s are ruined from a century of use.

As a prince raised around handmaidens and servants all his life, Johnny hasn’t an issue with nakedness as others might. Many eyes have laid upon him, his body is no secret treasure to remain locked away. And Taeyong, as someone who has lived many years with no one to see his body but the trees around him and the Gods themselves, hasn’t any shyness in him left either.

The first time Johnny had hobbled against Taeyong’s shoulders to this little crook in the river, Taeyong had snorted at Johnny’s inquisitive look as the Ilunae unrobed.

_ “I’m a-hundred-and-twenty years old, Youngho,”  _ he had mused.  _ “Eventually a body just feels like a vessel.” _

These afternoons are peaceful. Most of Johnny’s time spent with Taeyong is - it’s just the two of them and the forest always looming. Their days are quiet, simple routine, silent companionship and amicable conversation. Johnny is so used to days spent waking up when the sun is still hidden, being paraded around and dragged into problems that should not be his. Lessons, training, meetings. Time spent around his father.

Johnny wouldn’t go so far as to say he loves his father. He respects him. But,  _ Gods,  _ a day spent by his side is enough to age Johnny by years.

They pass bottles back and forth, scrubbing themselves clean. The suds in the water slowly drift onward, carried by the gentle current that kicks at their ankles. Taeyong climbs up onto a rock face to wash and beat their clothes. Johnny kicks his feet out from under him, allows himself to float on his back.

This is his favourite part - they sit and they float and wait for the sun to dry their clothes. Johnny once asked Taeyong what he does in the winter, to bathe and clean his clothes. Taeyong had just grumbled miserably.

Johnny waits a few minutes. Listens to some of the birds in the trees. Then he says, “I think- I think tomorrow I’d like to go on a hunt.”

Taeyong is silent. Johnny’s eyes remain closed as he floats on his back and lets the sun warm his face.

“I mean, I’m improving every day,” he continues. “I am fine, walking on my own. I can- I won’t go far.”

Still, more silence carries on. Johnny listens to the ripple of water swirling around his ears, lapping at his skin. He opens his eyes to see where tall green trees kiss a bright blue sky. He pictures himself floating in that pool of blue, staring back at himself, a perfect mirror image.

Once more, he continues, “I just think I need it. I not only want to help, Taeyong. I- I need to.”

Another beat passes. Johnny thinks he hears the sounds of Taeyong’s feet slapping against the rockface.

“I worry,” Taeyong says, barely audible through the drone of the river. “I worry for your wellbeing, but- I know you are capable of fending for yourself. You’re quite capable.”

Johnny turns his head just in time to see Taeyong leap from the rockface, a quiet  _ splash  _ following shortly after. When Taeyong resurfaces, he’s by Johnny’s head, treading water. Johnny smiles and Taeyong returns it. If Johnny didn’t know the Ilunae was made of starlight, he’d think he was kin with the sun itself.

“Just don’t go far.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll draw you a map. Of places to go and those you shan’t step foot in.”

“That’s quite considerate of you, Taeyong.”

Taeyong chews on his cheek. It’s a nervous habit that Johnny has noticed, and it makes him want to reach out and cup that cheek of his, soothe his worries. Something this beautiful must be delicate, and something this delicate must not stress. He would hate to watch it shatter.

Instead, though, he waits for the cogs in Taeyong’s head to stop turning. He can see it when Taeyong sighs, and stops treading enough that his chin dips under the surface.

“You’ll be fine,” Taeyong says, as if he’s telling himself. “I know nothing of where you come from or the life you had before your fall, but I know for certain that you’re stubborn and capable and-”

“Taeyong,” Johnny says with a placating smile. He tilts his body until his hips and legs sink under, swimming face-to-face with Taeyong. “All you need to know about my past is that I was raised to pull my own weight, respect authority, and accept responsibility.”

“Right,” Taeyong says softly with a blink and a nod.

Johnny goes on, “and you’ve been taking care of me, free of cost, for weeks, now. I would like to not only do this for you, but for myself. To gain back some sense of independence.”

That backwards tilt in Taeyong’s eyebrows relax into something less pathetic. The corner of his mouth quirks up into a little understanding half-smile, and instead of answering Johnny in any helpful way, he just reaches up a dripping hand and ghosts his fingertips over Johnny’s right eyebrow.

“The bruise above your brow,” Taeyong says, “is pretty much all healed up. I thought that one would never leave.”

When Johnny smiles in response, he can feel it all the way down to his cold, numb toes. “Now if only the rest of them would follow suit.”

\-----

“I cannot stress to you the importance of avoiding these shaded areas.”

“Yes, Taeyong, you’ve told me as many times as years you’ve been alive,” Johnny says with a laugh, folding up the map that Taeyong sketched onto parchment.

Taeyong is looking at him with a tense furrow in his brow and a clenched jaw. He stares - rather unyieldingly - into Johnny’s eyes, like if he stares long enough his thoughts will etch themselves into the backs of Johnny’s eyelids for him to never forget. “You have your protection spell?”

Johnny clutches at the little bottle filled with smoke and magic, strung around his neck with twine. “Always.”

“Good,” Taeyong says. He takes a step back, out of Johnny’s space, and hands him his quiver full of roughly crafted arrows. “If you find yourself in trouble, just place your open palms on the ground or the trunk of a tree and think  _ real hard  _ about the help you need. I’ll be able to find you.”

Johnny furrows his brows a moment. That’s… new. At least it is an ability that Taeyong has not yet shown him. But, he figures, there isn’t much time to dwell on it, now. There’s only a few hours until sundown, and less time until dinner.

He smiles his most charming smile as he begins backing away from Taeyong - who still looks tiny and terrified, wringing his hands together and pinching his brows.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Johnny says. Then, he turns to embark on his hunt. “I’ll be back before sundown.”

“Youngho,” Taeyong calls, sincere enough that Johnny turns on his heel to look back at him. “If the earth starts to grab at your ankles- you’ve gone too far.”

Something about those words twist around in Johnny’s gut. Still, he puts on his best showmanship smile. “Duly noted.”

He thinks, again, of Doyoung.

As of late, he’s been thinking of his friends and family and kingdom less and less - not so much a result of disinterest of lack of caring, but moreso that his days are filled up with tasks and chores, sustaining his own life and that of Taeyong’s, together. Sometimes, though, the quiet creeps in, and Johnny is left with an ache in his bones that should have long ago healed, an ache that is not physical, but emotional, and just as real and debilitating. It’s so easy to let his mind wander to those he loves and how much he misses them. How much they must miss him. And it’s enough to break and Crown Prince’s heart.

_ Kings can cry,  _ he often reminds himself,  _ and Kings can hurt.  _ The difference, however, is how he handles it.

He wonders how much Taeyong would miss him if he were to head home. Would it be easier without a goodbye? Most importantly, could Johnny even  _ survive  _ the journey back alone?

Losing himself in his whirlwind of thoughts is simple, when Johnny is surrounded by nothing but the breath of the forest around him. The sunlight above him. He limps slowly and carefully through the foliage, over stones and dirt and roots. He keeps his eyes peeled for game, though his mind and heart are immeasurably far away.

It’s funny, Johnny thinks, how even he can feel the life and breath of the forest’s heart beneath him, even though he isn’t in tune with magic the way that Taeyong is. He knows little about magic, only what Taeyong has told him - that it’s something like a language that you’re either capable of learning or not. An understanding of the voices of the moon, the stars, the earth, the sky. An ability to comprehend the inaudible voices of the energy that surrounds them.

None of it means anything to Johnny, who can listen and listen and squeeze his eyes and listen but hear nothing but the regular sounds of water and wind. Birds and squirrels. Taeyong says it’s not so much about the physical sense of hearing - but something like hearing with one’s soul. Johnny hasn’t a clue what that means.

Still, Johnny listens and listens. Something about the forest today feels…  _ alive.  _ He thinks he may be hanging around with Taeyong too much.

He listens and listens, and he finds his prey. His heart skips a beat with excitement as he falls into step behind the buck.

  
  


The air around him is beginning to cool as Johnny finds his way back to camp. The map Taeyong drew him comes in handy, simple and effective, and his only real struggle is limping on his bad leg with the weight of a full-grown buck over his shoulders. It’s been way too long since Johnny has had the level of exercise his body is used to. He thinks he may need to head off for another bath, tonight.

“Youngho!” Relief drips from Taeyong’s voice, fully saturated with it. He rushes to Johnny’s side, attempts to wrestle the kill from Johnny’s shoulders, but Johnny shrugs him off.

“Just-  _ hng- _ guide me to where you’d like to clean it.”

“Just by the river is good. Here.”

Together, they get the buck off of Johnny’s shoulders and onto the ground. His breath is heavy with exertion. But,  _ Gods,  _ does he ever feel good.

“Youngho, this is…” Taeyong trails off, staring at the deer wide-eyed and puzzled. “It’ll take us a month to eat all of this.”

Johnny smiles, despite the exhaustion and the pain. “That’s- that’s the goal.”

When Taeyong looks up at him, the stars in his eyes seem to burn brighter. It’s fascinating, gobsmackingly stunning, and Johnny isn’t entirely sure if he’s imagining it, or if Taeyong really does appear a little closer to  _ godly  _ today.

“I’m going to-” he stops himself mid sentence, gesturing over to the river. He’s a little speechless for reasons he doesn’t think he can dilute down to just his physical state.

He wanders over to the riverbed, crouching down where water meets land. He splashes some water over his face, into his hair. Tries to shake the sweat off his skin and the tiredness out of his bones. It takes him a while, to catch his breath, but when he feels good and ready to turn back around, he sees that Taeyong has already butchered the carcass into portions in what feels like record time. 

Most shockingly, though, is that Taeyong is using a hovering hand to bring splashes of water up from the river to where he holds slabs of meat. A surreal, hypnotizing swirl of water floating mid-air in the space between the river and Taeyong’s feet, crashing down against where blood stains the earth and Taeyong’s hands to rinse them clean.

Perhaps Johnny wasn’t imagining things when he saw the universe burning in Taeyong’s irises.

“What’s with you, today?” Johnny asks. He feels as though he’s asking the forest, herself, too. “You’re just… overflowing with magic.”

Taeyong looks up at him, wide-eyed.

“Why- tonight’s a full moon, Youngho,” he says, simple and sweet, like it isn’t the most horrifying thing Johnny has ever heard. “I always get more powerful when the Goddess shines her brightest.”

And though Johnny had just stood up on his feet, he collapses down to his knees. “Oh, Gods,” he cries, dread weighing heavy on his heart and in his ribs. He feels as though he might be sick. “Oh,  _ Gods,  _ Taeyong! I’m- I’m not prepared for this!”

Taeyong looks equal parts confused and concerned. He rushes to Johnny’s side, reaching out to console him. “Pre- prepared for what, Youngho?”

Johnny continues to panic, his breaths coming shorter and shorter. He isn’t- he doesn’t know what to do - he was not prepared for his, he hasn’t a sacrifice, he was so  _ unready  _ for a day like tonight. His people may suffer because of his own shortcomings, the Goddess’ wrath may smite down at those he loves at any moment.

“Shh, Youngho!” Taeyong shakes him. “She’d never do that to you, why would you ever say that?”

Johnny realizes, belatedly, that he had been rambling his worries aloud. He looks at Taeyong, at the kindness and the galaxies in his eyes, the confused and worried furrow of his brow. The way the silver light of twilight makes his hair look like it was strung from the moonlight that reflects off ripples in water and guides the way for creatures who prosper in the sun’s absence. He takes a deep breath, and pushes himself up from where he’s kneeling.

Taeyong just looks up from where he remains at Johnny’s feet, eyes wide and spectacular. 

“No,” Johnny says, a reprimand to himself. “No, this is no time to panic. I’m sorry, Taeyong, but I’ll need to take some of this meat.”

“Why?” Taeyong asks, voice small.

Johnny places a hand in Taeyong’s hair and brushes the silver strands back. “Back home - in my culture - we sacrifice and we pray on a full moon. The Moon Goddess has not always been kind to our people, so we… we beg for her mercy on the night’s when she’s her strongest.”

It takes a moment of contemplation, nothing but the sounds of woodland creatures scurrying home for the night or waking for their day. Somewhere down the stream, frogs begin to croak, a choir of the night, a song for the Gods to hear.

Taeyong simply says, “That doesn’t sound like her.”

Johnny hasn’t the time to explain.

He makes quick work of finding someplace secluded, building a fire and lighting it until it grows to a healthy, steady flame. He breathes, stares up at the proud, round moon, and wishes that he had time to prepare - that he wasn’t bleeding with exhaustion and could be fully prepared to give this his everything. Not the scraps of what energy remains in him.

Camp is quiet, as he makes his way back to gather what he can to sacrifice. He plans on burning his helping of tonight’s dinner and a few pieces more. He loathes to take too much away from Taeyong - he thinks starving a child of the moon would be a bit counterproductive. 

When Taeyong steps out from the cave at the sound of Johnny’s footsteps, Johnny is frozen in his place. His feet have sunk into the ground beneath him, his eyes frozen in their unblinking state. Never before has he seen something more beautiful, something more separated from the mundaneness of human.

Taeyong glows. He quite literally, actually,  _ glows.  _ Like the moon herself, he radiates white light, subtle under his flesh and sourced from the magic within his core. 

“Quit staring,” Taeyong says, bashful. He rushes up to Johnny to hand him a basket. “I’ve taken the liberty of splitting the shares. I hope this is enough.”

Johnny, begrudgingly, removes his eyes from Taeyong to look down at the basket between them. “It’s perfect, thank you.”

“There’s also some ginger paste in there,” Taeyong adds. “Rub a little bit under your nose and on the roof of your mouth and it should help keep you awake.”

“Every day you wrack up my debt to you.”

Nothing but the croaking of distant frogs, the ripple of the river, and the oppressive gaze of the big, bright moon. Taeyong doesn’t release his grip from the basket. Johnny doesn’t pull away.

Finally, “Go, Youngho,” Taeyong says, voice whisper-soft. “Go beg for that mercy of yours.”

At Taeyong’s gentle demand, Johnny turns around and goes. He goes to beg for that mercy of his. And if tonight, he feels more inclined to sing hymns of the Goddess’ insurmountable greatness and her touch of beautiful magic, he decides it best not to question it.

\-----

When the sun begins to rise, Johnny’s body is heavy as lead and creaking like floorboards. With a face and tongue sticky with ginger and downturned with exhaustion, he wanders back to camp on his wailing leg and joints.

Taeyong sleeps soundly, on his little pile of furs, swathed in the shadows that the stone around them creates, his breath heavy and full and brimming with life. Johnny rubs his eyes and wonders how carefully the Moon Goddess constructed him. If she used the same hand to build something so delicate as she did to cause such destruction. Or was Taeyong made with special care?

He’s tired, he knows. His heart’s been pumping him through too many hours with too little rest, and his mind is fuzzy and soft at the edges with it. Nothing he can think of, right now, is anything close to sound of mind.

Johnny sinks into his furs with a sigh. He doesn’t even bother to pull any over him, too exhausted and ready to melt into the ground and never move again. He doubts it’s even so much as a second before he’s drifting off to much needed, long overdue slumber.

\-----

He wakes with a start. A start similar to the ones he experienced within his first days, here. He wakes with a gasp and a shock of panic, and it takes a brief moment of disorientation before he realizes what woke him.

“Your highness,” announces a booming voice from above him. He realizes his arms are trapped in a vice-like grip. “Your highness, you have to wake up!”

A shatter, a shout. Johnny thinks he hears Taeyong scream. 

With that, he begins to writhe in his captor’s - saviour’s? - grip, kicking out in an attempt to gain freedom. Through his thrashing, his shouts of  _ “Let me go!” _ he sees men in the custom armour and uniform of the Echovian Palace Guards raiding the cave, turning jars and baskets inside out and upside down.

_ “Taeyong!”  _ He screams out, but he doesn’t receive a  _ Youngho  _ in return. He looks up at the man holding his right arm, then at the man gripping his left, and hopes he exudes all the fire and anger and  _ dominance  _ that he’s mustering up from his gut and into his gaze. “Let me  _ go!”  _

“Your Highness, we are under strict orders,” the guard on his left says. He’s younger, newer to the cavalry. Johnny remembers him being knighted. “We are to secure your safety, no matter the cost.”

“I’m safe! I’m safe, I can assure you, I’m safe,” his voice is rushed and full of panic and anger. The world around him is still littered with noise and chaos. He cannot stand the sound of shattering glass - all of Taeyong’s hard work, destroyed.

The guards look down at him with softer expressions. They look as though they pity him. Pitiful is not exactly how he wishes to be perceived, but he figures he can work this to his advantage.

Softer, he says, “The man that was with me-”

“Your captor is being dealt with-”

“No!” Johnny shouts, thrashing again against the grip of the guards, enough that he is freed. He shoots up from his bed, and races out of their grasp. “He is not my captor!”

Beyond the mouth of the cave, it is even worse. Men in uniform surround the quiet, peaceful camp and bring with them fire and destruction. The sky is clouded over near-black. Johnny needn’t understand magic to know that the forest is crying out in agony.

“Taeyong!” Johnny shouts out, again, pushing through crowds of his father’s men, where they dig up the earth and stomp on forest grounds. “Tae-!”

He is grabbed, again, by the forearms - but this time by the waist and shoulders, too. With four men flocked to him, grasping at him and pulling him back, Johnny is useless to kick against it. He may be close to healed, but his body is still weak enough to lose its fight rather quickly, and he’s out of breath before he has the chance to free himself of his living restraints. He realizes, then, that he is crying.

Johnny cannot hear the serene ripple of the river over the shouts of men. He wonders, in his panicked and angry mind, if the world around him has always been this violent, and he has just become too used to the peaceful quiet of this corner of the woods.

“Youngho!” comes like music into Johnny’s ears. The sound of Taeyong’s voice is enough to have Johnny’s exhausted body perking back up.

“Let him go!” He screams, watching as men swarm against Taeyong like wasps in an effort to keep him down and powerless. Somehow, amongst the ruckus of noise, Johnny can hear the distinct, metallic sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath.

_ “No!”  _ He cannot scream any louder. He feels his lungs about to give out, his heart about to burst from the cage of his chest. In his effort to kick his legs underneath him to gain his freedom, another foot lands on his poor, injured calf.

It turns out, Johnny  _ can  _ scream louder.

_ “Youngho!”  _

Taeyong’s outcry is accompanied by a swing of his palm and a burst of light and energy. A force, something like a wall, shouts out from his center like the spring that shot out from the fallen star, and the force of it throws the bodies of the men that surround him back like a violent wave. The wall hits Johnny square in the chest, and he and the men that swarm him are all tossed back from the eye of the storm.

Johnny doesn’t even feel it when his back hits the stone.

  
  



	4. Secrets locked and guarded are secrets that wish to be freed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny is home and Taeyong has come with him.
> 
> Except Taeyong has not received the warm welcome Johnny has dreamt of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knowwww i know, it’s been like a month since I updated but!! I did a commission and then signed myself up or a fic week literally like a week before deadline so I was busy!! I promise you will not have to wait this long again.
> 
> As always, enjoy!! Comments are appreciated and you can always reach me at my socials that are always linked in the end notes :) xoxo

Johnny is getting awfully tired of waking up disoriented and unsure of where he is. 

It takes him a moment, blinking his tired eyes open and squinting through dim candlelight. The stone walls and vaulted ceiling is familiar, along with the scent of blood, decay, and medicinal oils. He’s in the palace infirmary.

He feels, vaguely, like he’s seven years old all over again, casting up his broken arm for the very first time. 

He sits up, no longer ailed by broken ribs and fully mobile once again. It feels good, to just sit up on his own, comfortable on this infirmary cot. He’s met with the sound of exasperated gasps.

“Your Highness!” comes a scolding. Johnny turns his head to see a palace medic he doesn’t know by name, tired lines and signs of age mapping the skin around her eyes. “You mustn’t move so quickly!”

Johnny blinks, rubs his eyes with his fists. His favourite handmaiden, Wendy, is coming up behind the medic on silent feet. She has this microscopic smile on her face, one that only Johnny can see, only Johnny can read. She looks, honestly, impressed.

“Taeyong!” is Johnny’s only response. “Taeyong, where- where is he?”

The medic pauses. Her expression falters as her feet skid to a stop, steps away from Johnny’s bedside. “I do not know, Your Highness.”

Johnny looks to Wendy, not even sparing the medic another glance. Her eyes widen, reflecting constellations in the scattered candlelight, as she rocks up on her toes and shoots a nervous glance toward the back of the medic’s head.

“He’s safe, Your Highness,” she says, softly. The medic turns her head to look at Wendy, a scolding on the tip of her tongue. “That’s- all I know.”

And Johnny can understand a hint if he’s ever seen one - now is not the time and place to drill Wendy for information. It will have to wait, no matter how much it pains him to do so. Johnny runs a hand over his face, through his hair. He cringes at the way he feels to the touch. 

“Wendy,” he says, putting on his Prince Voice. Wendy hates when he speaks to her like that, he knows, but he also needs to put on a show under the watchful gaze of the palace medic. “Please, by the time I return to my quarters this evening, have my favourite bath oils prepared.”

There’s a tiny clench of her jaw, one that’s unimpressed but also understanding. “Yes, your Highness,” she says with a nod and a gleam in her candlelit eyes.

“Lay back, your highness,” the medic then says, pushing gently at Johnny’s shoulders. “Allow me to have a look at you.”

Johnny obeys, laying back and allowing the medic to poke and prod at him, test his injuries and count his bruises. He stares up at the ceiling, wonders how there are never cobwebs in all the corners that remain so far out of reach. He listens to the sound of the medic and Wendy passing things back and forth, scratching down notes, humming thoughtfully.

Then, Johnny turns his head to look at Wendy. “At least spare me this much information-”

“Prince John, I highly doubt you need to beg for information from a dutiful handmaiden like me.”

Johnny nearly snorts at the politeness she’s put on. It so does not suit her. “Doyoung and Jaehyun. Are they…?”

Wendy’s smile is sweet. “They’re fine.”

Something that’s been clenched tight in Johnny’s chest releases, and he realizes, now, that he has not been breathing well enough for a very long time. He closes his eyes, turns his head back to face his smile to the ceiling. “Good,” he says. That’s all there is to say.

“I must say, your Highness,” the medic says, drawing back from his bedside. “Despite clear evidence of trauma, you… it appears you are all healed up. Save for a tender leg, of course.”

Johnny groans as he shifts where he lies. “And this ache in my back?”

“You were thrown against a rockface, your Highness. You’ve earned some nasty bruises.”

He is quickly discharged from the infirmary with a change of clothes and a vial of pain relieving tonic that tastes just as bad as Taeyong’s but won’t work quite as well. He pockets the vial, rolls his shoulders, and walks on relatively steady feet out from the infirmary tower, down the stairs, and into the main corridors of the palace.

It will not be long until Johnny is surrounded by people - shoved into courtrooms and Council meetings, leading squadrons during their training, meeting with lords and royalty from surrounding kingdoms. He’s spent so much time alone, just he and Taeyong, the only company he could have asked for. Johnny cannot remember how to hone his expression, that skill he has gained from years under a royal thumb, how to put on an act and associate with guests and inferiors. All he wants to be, right now, is alone.

Besides finding Taeyong. It would be fantastic to find Taeyong.

“Johnnyboy,” sounds a sing-song voice from behind him. Johnny turns around, and coming from around a bend in the corridor is Johnny’s long-time friend, lute fastened on his back, permanent mischief in his eyes.

“Ten,” Johnny says with a smile, stalking back toward the bard.

“Glad to see you up and at it,” he says with a smile. “Thought you’d gone and disappeared.”

“I did, for a bit,” Johnny says, narrowly avoiding Ten’s lute as he wraps the boy up in a hug. “It was kind of nice, being gone.”

“Not around here, it wasn’t.” Ten steps back from the hug, a hand gripping each of Johnny’s biceps as he looks him up and down, as if assessing the damage. “As happy as I am to see you, I’m afraid I come bearing bad news.”

Johnny’s brow furrows. “What is it?”

“I overheard some guards speaking,” Ten says with a roll of his eyes. “For men sworn to confidentiality, their voices sure do travel.”

Johnny snorts. “And?”

“The King is asking for you,” Ten says as he lets go of Johnny’s biceps and takes another step back. He glances pointedly past Johnny’s shoulder, down the hall. “And it appears his men have found you.”

One glance over Johnny’s shoulder proves Ten right. A small crowd of palace guards, in their distinguished uniform, come down the hallway with their eyes trained on Johnny’s form. With a sigh, Johnny turns around to reach out and squeeze Ten’s hand.

“Thank you, Tennie. I’ll talk to you later?”

Ten waves a dismissive hand. “Tend to your Princely duties and worry about me, later.”

“Your Highness.”

Johnny spins around to meet the eyes of his father’s right hand man and Jaehyun’s father. He is, at least, grateful that his father sent someone Johnny is familiar and comfortable with. It’s comforting to see such a warm and familiar face.

“Captain Jung,” Johnny says with a smile.

The Captain, however, remains stoic and professional. “The King has requested your presence.”

“Requested or demanded?”

A beat passes, in which Captain Jung looks as if he’s hesitating solely to keep himself from smiling or laughing. Then, “Come with me, your Highness.”

Johnny follows.

After rounding two corners, as Johnny and the Captain have naturally trailed behind the rest of the guards by a sizeable amount, the Captain leans into Johnny’s ear and says, “Good to see you, son. I am so glad you’re doing well.”

Johnny smiles in return. “Thank you, Yoonoh.”

Captain Jung’s hand lands on the hollow spot between Johnny’s shoulderblades, and nothing more is needed to be said. 

\-----

Johnny knows he is in for the scolding of a lifetime. He disobeyed palace rules, ventured into dangerous territory, required an entire search party to obtain him. It goes without saying that Johnny left a mess behind him, left his father to anguish over the state of his successor, his lineage. He left an entire kingdom to worry about him, and now he will pay the price.

He holds his breath once the guards have pushed open the doors to the throne room. Just as quickly as the group of them step inside, his father speaks up.

“Leave us.”

Johnny hears the sound of the massive, elaborate doors shutting, and then he and his father are alone.

A moment passes. Then, “Come here, John.”

Johnny falls into step, walking down the familiar aisle leading to the throne. The click of his boots is muted in the long, narrow, carpet the colour of rich mulberry wine. The late afternoon sun shines in a kaleidoscope of colours along the walls and floors, a disarray of the colours in the stained glass windows turning the ground beneath Johnny into a cluster of hues that rival the auroras that arrive in March.

Ahead of him, sat haughtily on an ostentatious throne - that one day Johnny will occupy - and framed so ornately by the high ceilings and imposing pillars, is his father. The King of Echovia. 

When Johnny arrives at the foot of the platform, he takes a knee. “Your Majesty,” he says.

Johnny raises his head from where he has it bowed. The King is looking at him studiously, pensively. Johnny waits.

“Stand up, my son.”

Johnny does.

“Hm,” his father says with a quirked eyebrow. “Glad to see you so mobile. You have been gone for quite some time and there is much for you to catch up on.”

“Oh,” Johnny says, pinching his brows together. He expected much worse than this. Johnny inhales, puffs his chest out proudly. “Yes, your Majesty. The medic has advised me that I am good to go, except for the ache in my leg.”

His father’s smile spreads, predatory and sly. “Excellent.”

A beat passes, nothing but the sound of empty air bouncing off every corner of every wall and ceiling. Johnny presumes there is to be no more discussion of his health and well-being. He gathers his father brought him here for his own agenda, things that need attended to, and whatever questions Johnny has, he figures he will be more likely to receive an answer if he waits until after his father has said what he needs to say. 

So, Johnny asks, “What is it that you wish to inform me?”

“Ah,” the King stands above Johnny, raising a hand to inspect his nail beds. “That Ilunae of yours-”

“Taeyong,” Johnny cuts in, fervent, ready to grasp at an opportunity. “How is he, please?”

The King does not answer right away. Instead, he peers down at Johnny, studious. The ever-growing furrow between his grows makes Johnny anxious. 

Instead of an answer, his father continues, “I have some of our best and brightest medics and researchers assigned to him. We’ve never had one of his kind anywhere in our reach, except to kill them. I think this is a grand opportunity to gain some more knowledge on these wicked little creatures, don’t you agree?”

Johnny is glad his hands are clasped poised behind his back, so his father does not see the way his hands curl into fists. He wants to argue, wants to tell his father that Taeyong is far from wicked, perhaps the most good thing Johnny’s ever laid witness to. He wants to fight for Taeyong’s honour, he wants to beg for his mercy, he wants to tell his father in a thousand ways that Taeyong deserves to be sheltered and tucked away in the coziest of homes. 

This is an argument he simply cannot have - not against the power of his father. One wrong move can cost Johnny - cost Taeyong - everything.

Instead, he says, “What are your intentions with him?”

“We are conducting research on the thing. I’d like to be the first King in history to be able to add knowledge of how the Ilunae’s celestial body works and behaves to our history books. There is much to learn.”

Something ugly curls in Johnny’s gut. He does not like the way this sounds. “He saved my life, you know.”

“Whatever debt you owed to the moonchild is redundant, now. You owe his kind nothing.”

“I see.” It’s a cold and bitter slap to Johnny’s face. He almost wishes it were that simple. He almost wishes Taeyong were truly as evil as this King of his believes his race to be, so he could allow this to happen to him without guilt. So he could not distress over what is out of his control. “Where is he?”

“Irrelevant,” the King sighs dismissively. He continues his slow pace up and down the front of the platform. “I do have some more good news, however. Our stores this year are overflowing. Once we calculate all the rations to provide to the markets, we will have so much remaining there will be no room for it or any way to preserve it. It’s almost a pity.”

“The hunts have been flourishing,” Johnny acknowledges, frowning. He doesn’t understand how a Kingdom of so many people could have so much food left over that it only goes to waste. 

“You would know that, wouldn’t you?” His father’s tone is sharp and accusatory. Johnny bites his tongue. “Speaking of which, the effort to replace the Captain’s position has been a thorn in my side. It appears none of the other hunters wish to overtake the position that belonged to your friend, John.”

“Doyoung is well respected and admired.”  _ And good at his job,  _ he wants to add. He knows when to draw back, however.

“Yes. But also foolish.”

Johnny wants to roll his eyes. “I can vouch for him and his position-”

“No need, John,” his father barks. “I do not care what power you swung over him to convince him to allow you to be so reckless and stupid. He knew his duty and he knew better.”

There is no room for argument. Johnny understands that clear as day. 

“Moving on,” his father segues with a wave of his hand. “There are more pressing matters to discuss. I am considering raising taxes as winter approaches-”

At that, Johnny just tunes his father out. He’s become awfully good at this, pretending he’s listening and knowing exactly which moments to offer his  _ Yeses _ and his  _ Rights.  _ Eventually, his father seems to finish up whatever he was on about, and Johnny tunes back in just in time to hear him say, “You are dismissed, John. You are to be in the barracks at dawn.”

Johnny has never departed a room so fast.

\-----

Just as Johnny is barging through the doors that lead to his wing of the palace, he spots two figures standing in the corridor a few doors down, murmuring amongst each other. It makes Johnny’s heart soar, unable to hide the painful grin on his face as he speeds over to his friends as quickly as his feet can take him.

Doyoung and Jaehyun groan as Johnny pulls them in against him, his arms squeezing them so tight it knocks the air out of their lungs.

Then, Johnny receives a slap to his arm. “You idiot!” Doyoung scolds. “You fool! You absolute imbecile! I fucking told you not to go, I fucking-  _ hng  _ \- told you!”

There’s a quiet click of their boots hitting marble as Johnny puts his friends down. A step away from them, Johnny is free to beam at them with all his might. Jaehyun beams back. Doyoung is positively fuming.

“You-” Doyoung spits out, a furrow in his brow, ready to scold and scold some more. Then, in an instant, the tension and the fight drain from his shoulders and he falls into Johnny with an audible  _ thump.  _ “I thought you were dead, you fool.”

Something melts in Johnny’s chest. He winks at Jaehyun over Doyoung’s shoulder. “And leave you behind? I could never.”

Johnny looks between his two friends, smiling so wide his face is beginning to ache. Then, he feels his heart drop, and his expression drops with it, something somber filling him to the brim, and he drops to one knee and bows his head. The marble is cool through the fabric of his pants.

“I am so greatly sorry to you both,” Johnny says. “I know I caused so much worry and put both of your jobs and lives at risk.” He lifts his head, meets Doyoung’s eyes. “You lost your position because of me.”

Doyoung rolls his eyes as Jaehyun huffs, “Stand up, Johnny, don’t be so ridiculous.”

The space between Johnny’s brows furrows. “But-”

“Seriously, John,” Doyoung huffs, bending over to grab Johnny by the arm and pull him up off his knee. “How were any of us to predict what would occur? You are alive, and that’s all that matters.”

Johnny sighs as he brushes off his pants. “About that,” he says, “The Ilunae who saved my life. I’m looking for him.”

His friends look at him, frowns on their confused and concerned faces. They have picked up on the way Johnny’s pitch lowers, knowing that in a palace full of wait staff, you are never truly alone. 

He continues, “Everything we know- the things we were taught about them being a threat to us… it’s all untrue.”

“Perhaps in this circumstance,” Jaehyun says. “Perhaps in small numbers.”

Johnny meets his friend and guard’s eye. “He saved my life. He nursed me back to health. He is my  _ friend,  _ I have earned his trust and he has earned mine.”

There’s a moment where no one says anything at all. Just the three of them, so small amongst the sprawling marble floors and impossibly high ceilings. Johnny’s friends look at him, studious and curious, unsure of what to say next. Doyoung has had his haircut during Johnny’s absence, and Jaehyun’s sword’s sheath appears brand new. Johnny thinks only of Taeyong.

Eventually, he says, “I only need to know where he is. I just need to know.”

Doyoung sighs. “Well, then I am of no use. I only heard of his arrival through the grapevine.” He looks past Johnny’s shoulder, at the setting sun through the elaborate windows. The sunlight on his face is slowly turning from a warm hue to something cool and dim. “I have to go, I was expected at the gates by sundown. Johnny-”

“Yes?”

“I cannot stress to you how relieved I am to see you alive. I’ve missed you.”

Something prickles at the backs of Johnny’s eyes and his heart sings. The smile that blooms on his face is soft and full of love for his friends, gratefulness for their presence in his life and relief that he has returned to them. He pulls Doyoung in for one last hug. “Thank you, Doyoung. I am so happy to be back.”

Then, Doyoung makes his leave. He and Jaehyun stand there and watch Doyoung’s form shrink as he makes his way down the corridor, silently counting each of his steps. Something hangs in the air, some unspoken, unshared knowledge that hovers between himself and Jaehyun, filling the space with something palpable and thick with tension.

Jaehyun clears his throat. “I know where he is.”

Johnny has never turned his head to look at his friend so fast.

“I was there, when the decision was made of what to do with him.” Johnny waits and waits as Jaehyun looks at the patterns in the floor, the crowning on the walls, the framing of the window panes. Looks anywhere except in Johnny’s eye. “I can tell you where he is, John, but- but this whole cliffside will collapse before you have clearance to go up there.”

“I just need to know,” Johnny says, his heart racing. “Please.”

There’s tightness in Jaehyun’s sturdy shoulders, defeat in his expression at Johnny’s plea. “He’s in the white tower, the furthest one South.”

“Gods,” Johnny’s heart drops to the ground beneath his feet. “Why such a cruel place? The other prison towers weren’t terrible enough?”

Jaehyun shakes his head. “Is it such a surprise for your father to decide something so cruel? It’s an old and miserable place and it’s far from the rest of the palace - far from  _ you.”  _ Johnny purses his lips together, unable to deny the logic Jaehyun presents. A moment passes, where the two of them are stuck in thought. Then, “Is he really worth it, Johnny? All this stress, all this concern?”

Johnny settles Jaehyun with his most honest, vulnerable stare. “I owe him my life, Jaehyun.”

“Beyond that,” Jaehyun says, his voice gentle and soft with an attempt to understand. “Beyond the fact that he saved your life. Is he truly this worthy of your… your protection?”

“He’s my friend. If it were you or Doyoung up there, would you have doubt in this worrisome state of mine?”

There is so much more Johnny could say, but nothing else comes out. He could go on and on, he could mention Taeyong’s goodness and his care, his most gentle touch. He could mention the way Taeyong treats the earth like it’s precious and fragile. He could mention Taeyong’s outlandish beauty, something so pure and so docile and breathtaking. A person so full of power, yet so delicate all at once. Yet, none of these words come forward, as if they’re private, a secret for Johnny to know and no one else. It’s almost as if he feels guilty for caring so much, for feeling so much, and there’s a thought that nags at the back of his mind and tugs on his conscience, a thought he deems safest to ignore.

Jaehyun takes a moment to watch Johnny’s earnest expression, to consider what is said and what is unsaid between them. Then, he sighs. “You’re right. You’re right.”

Johnny’s stomach churns with guilt for reasons he cannot quite put his finger on. “I should get some rest. I need to be at the barracks at dawn.”

That makes Jaehyun smirk, a knowing glint in his eye. “Your father’s going to be keeping you pretty busy, huh?”

“He intends to keep me away from Taeyong,” Johnny says with a nod and a sigh. “What power do I have to stop him?”

Jaehyun’s hand lands on Johnny’s shoulder, placating. “Good night, John. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Johnny pulls Jaehyun in for another hug. He has a difficult time letting go.

When he finally arrives at his sleeping quarters, he stands in his mirror and studies himself for the first time in an entire cycle of the moon. He looks the same, if not in need of a haircut, a bit thinner. In need of a bath. 

It feels a little bizarre, to be home, to have to return to life as though he had never been gone. His room is the same, yet it feels so terribly large to him. So wide and vacant. His bed looks too soft, the candlelight that fills the room too warm and ever present. He cannot believe he has lived a whole life where people wait at his hands and feet, dress him, feed him, no matter how much he tries to fend for himself.

This life he has lived, pampered and prosperous. While Taeyong has spent a century mostly alone, at the mercy of the forest and surviving solely by the strength of his hands and the sharpness of his wit. How easy Johnny has always had it, how difficult for Taeyong. And it will only continue in this pattern.

A sigh, and a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and curl his hands into fists. He counts the seconds between his breaths in order to calm himself down, stop himself from doing something impulsive and destructive.

Wendy is waiting for him at the baths, he remembers. So he hurries through the door and down the hall to the baths.

The room is thick and warm with steam, the ornate pool of a bathtub filling up with hot water and dancing vapour. Everything smells like peppermint and evergreen, lemongrass and hot stones. Wendy stands on the opposite end of the tub, fiddling with the bottles of bath oils.

She looks up, and the corner of her mouth pulls up into a crooked little smile. “Your favourite bath oils, all prepared for you,  _ your highness.” _

Johnny laughs, a good and honest laugh. Today has been so long, he can’t wait to sink into this tub and never come out. Most importantly, however, he can’t wait to find out whatever knowledge Wendy may have.

She, apparently, is on the same train of thought. “So, what did you wish to talk about, Johnny?”

“Hilarious,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He reaches for the clasp at the back of his tunic’s neck and unfastens it. “You know very well what I wish to know.”

Wendy hums as she comes around the pool to Johnny’s side. He pulls his tunic over his head and hands it to her to fold. “I was there, when the squadron brought you home.”

“And Taeyong?” Johnny urges, pulling his pants down his legs and kicking them free from his ankles.

Wendy doesn’t even bat an eye as Johnny hands her the trousers. “He was bound and caged. I could not get a very good look at him, but I know- I know he was frightened.”

“He-” Johnny pauses, frowns. He stands there, at the edge of the tub, watching as Wendy calmly puts his garments aside, expression neutral. “Why cage him if he is already bound?”

“He is an Ilunae, Johnny,” the handmaiden responds. Her expression has softened and opened up, kind eyes reaching Johnny’s over the fog. “He is very powerful.”

“He would never harm anyone.”

“Then why did you arrive at the gates unconscious?” Her voice hardens. “Why did I have to put you on a gurney and aide your recovery?”

Johnny clenches his jaw shut tight, dropping his gaze to where his bare feet remain on the cedar floors. He can understand why Wendy would be upset - surely, if he were to rush out to find one of his friends unconscious and injured, he’d worry, too. He, too, would rush to find blame for the pain his friends endured. And he knows, by technicality, Taeyong’s power is the reason he had fallen into darkness, the reason his spine is bruised and the back of his head is tender. In reality, in context, it never would have happened if their camp had not been so violently raided.

He sighs, dipping a foot into the steaming bath water. Gods, he hasn’t felt warm water in so long.

“He was trying to protect me,” is what Johnny says, wading into the tub, letting his muscles melt. “Just as I was trying to protect him.”

Wendy frowns as she ponders this, watching the water lap up around Johnny’s shoulders as he sinks into place. “I believe you,” she eventually says. “He looked so small and terrified in that cage. I- I kind of wondered the same thing, you know, why he was both bound and caged. Especially when he looked so… so harmless. All curled up in defeat.”

It shatters Johnny’s heart to even imagine it. He says nothing at all.

He wonders if Taeyong is warm up in his cell tonight, as Johnny is soaking in his scented bath water. He hopes that Taeyong is warm. The realist within him knows very well he is not.

“Do you know where he is?” Wendy asks.

A pause. “I do.”

“Then you know it’s terribly guarded, right?”

Johnny swings his hand around in the water before him. He watches it wade through the water, slowed by the pressure and causing ripples at the surface. “Of course it is.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny,” she says, “I’m sorry about your friend. Madame Yoon, the medic I’ve been shadowing to learn the trade, she has been invited to join the team of people who will be poking and prodding at him. For research.”

That makes Johnny look up.

“If, by chance, I get clearance to see him… I- I’ll let you know. How he is doing.”

“That would mean the world to me.”

A while passes, where nothing is said. There is only the sound of rippling water and shifting wooden floors, only the dim light of twilight and the candles that burn. They both sit or stand there, thinking about the events of today, the events of this past moon cycle, breathing in thick, oily air, breathing out in pensive sighs.

“Oh!” Wendy suddenly exclaims, then patters over to a basket of towels and a change of clothes in the far corner of the room. “I nearly forgot!”

She returns to the edge of the tub, leaning over to show Johnny what she carries in her hand. His face lights up at the sight of a tiny, sealed jar, hung by a string of twine.

“This was on you when you arrived,” she says. “I thought it might be important, so I tucked it away.”

Johnny reaches for it, and Wendy hands it over with a smile. He cannot fight the grin on his face as he looks down at his little jar of protection, the smoke that’s darkened the glass, the string, the crystal, all the magic that is sealed inside. He curls his fist around it, presses it to his lips without thinking, his eyes squeezed shut tight as he thanks the Gods this has been returned to him, prays to the Gods that they watch over his Taeyong.

_ His  _ Taeyong. Another one of those thoughts Johnny must push aside.

When he opens his eyes, Wendy is looking at him with this amused sort of curiosity. She says, “He really means a lot to you, huh?”

“Yes,” he says, handing Wendy the jar so she can put it aside and safe from the water. And for what feels like the hundredth time that day, he adds, “he saved my life, you know.”

“I know,” she says, and she means it. Out of all the people he’s told, today, she is one that knows what trauma his body endured, and why it is a miracle he’s alive and walking about. “I know.”

\-----

The King intends to keep Johnny away from the Southern white tower, and keep him away he does.

Johnny rises with the sun every day, and collapses into bed long after the sun has bid farewell. His return seemingly brought on an entire new influx of responsibilities,  _ princely duties,  _ as Ten would teasingly call them - all this exhausting work that has Johnny strung out and lifeless, rubbing at his eyes and stretching his sore muscles.

His days are most often spent at the barracks and within the knights’ quarters. The King has put him in command of numerous new recruits, keeping him actively involved in the training, along with Jaehyun and a few other experienced guards. He exhausts his body, swinging a sword around all day with men who don’t yet know how to yield one, muddying his clothing sweating in his hairline. Especially with the heat of the summer that looms just over the horizon.

On top of the laboursome work, Johnny is being dragged into more and more council meetings and sitting in with his father for hearings. The High Council has been discussing the plans to increase taxes on the overflowing stores that will eventually make their way out into the markets, and all the number and government talk bore Johnny to tears. He finds his hours spent amongst councilmen and those in power somehow more exhausting and laboursome than his hours spent sparring out in the hot sun.

He works tirelessly and he works endlessly. And he does it all with his protection spell tucked safely beneath the collar of his tunic and his mind wandering South. 

From the barracks, the courtyard, and through the expanse of windows in that elaborate room where the councilmen meet, the Southern white prison tower hovers and looms like an ever-present eye watching over Johnny. He stares at it, in his moments of reprieve, subjecting him to vulnerability in his distraction.

Everyone notices it. No one says anything.

Even now, as he finally has an afternoon free of duty, he lies in the garden with his youngest brother, staring up at the sky with a little piece of him stuck on the distant figure of a tower made of white stone, reflecting the sunlight shamelessly and without tire.

Despite the war that rages on within Johnny, this afternoon is a peaceful affair. The weather is clear and warm and bright, and the wildflowers in Johnny’s favourite garden - the one with the cloud-shaped ponds - are beginning to bloom. 

His brother, Jisung, is such a ray of light and joy in such a tiresome world. When Johnny spends his time with his baby brother, his chest fills up until it’s overflowing and pushing at his eyes with some strange combination of nostalgia, grief, and unbridled adoration. He feels for the dear boy, whose life is so lonely and filled with nothing but lessons and tutors and maidens assigned to keep a watchful eye over him. Jisung plucks away at the petals on a flower, a child with no friends his own age.

Johnny does not quite blame his father for the way that Jisung has been raised. It was nine years ago that the birth of this baby marked the death of the King’s heart, and there was little time to celebrate new life amongst the grief of one that had just passed. Jisung was barely a week old when he attended his first funeral procession, the entire kingdom gathered to bow their heads in remembrance of that beautiful queen and her gentle touch. 

Even Johnny, for a little while, blamed the harmless, clueless baby for the loss of his mother. He was merely a teenager and so naive to how the world truly operates - unfairly and without justice. There is no rhyme or reason to the way the world plays out, the way woven yarn unwinds and the way the earth erodes under restless waves. It did not take him long to grow past it, to shift the blame from something so innocent to something as guilty as the skies above them. Jisung is a victim, if anything. A lonesome child, raised without a mother’s caring touch, a touch that Johnny had held so dear to him his entire life - and always will.

Johnny does not quite blame his father for how he handled it - when the king lays his eyes on his youngest son, all he sees is grief. And Jisung looks so devastatingly like his mother. 

Those pixie-like features of his, all delicate and upturned, especially so in his youth. The wind tousles his hair about as he plucks at what little petals hang from the further-along buds, and Johnny smiles to himself at the sight of him. Ah, he’s so young and so dear. So blissfully unaware of how the world may crash around him.

He moves one hand from where they cradle his head in the grass, running his fingers through Jisung’s wind-brushed hair. “Quit plucking out the petals,” Johnny says, softly, teasing. “Give the flowers a chance to blossom, why don’t you?”

“Oh no,” Jisung says quietly, turning to gape at Johnny wide-eyed. It makes Johnny laugh inwardly, his baby brother such an old and anxious soul. “Oh no, have I hurt them?”

Johnny’s smile widens to showcase all his teeth. “Nah,” he says, using his hand on Jisung’s shoulder to pull him down onto his chest. “Come here, little one. Let’s watch the clouds.”

Just laying out in the breeze, it’s chillier than Johnny thought it to be. He is so used to exerting his energy, yielding weapons in heavy armour. He’s grateful for Jisung’s warmth curled against him as they lie here, supine and watching the sky revolve around them, the breeze tossing about the grass and the growing flowers that frame their bodies. Jisung points out a few clouds, declares what shape they acquire, and Johnny doesn’t even give himself time for his eyes to focus on anything before just amicably agreeing. If Jisung sees a horse, a horse this cloud shall be. 

“Hey,” Johnny says, after a bit. “I’m very sorry I have not been able to see much of you, since I’ve returned.”

“It’s okay,” Jisung says politely. He rolls over, lying against Johnny’s chest. His hand instinctively curls around the little jar beneath the fabric of Johnny’s shirt. “Papa’s kept you busy, yes?”

Johnny’s heart softens into goo. “Busy is an understatement, kiddo.”

Jisung is very, very smart for a boy of nine years. All of his friends are adults and educators, all of his time spent learning, and his time outside of his lessons he learns some more. He’s a quiet and anxious boy, but he’s very perceptive and bursting with questions. Johnny’s a little concerned that it will be too soon that Jisung learns just how cruel and helpless it can be to live in a world where you haven’t the power to change it. 

“Why?” Jisung asks.

Johnny’s mouth purses into a tight line. His eyes wander over to where the very top of a certain white tower peeks its way over the garden walls and the palace beyond it. “There is something I would really like to do. Father will not allow it.”

“Why not?”

Johnny looks at Jisung. He isn’t entirely sure what to say.

Jisung continues, “Is there a way you can do it?”

“Oh,” Johnny says, ruffling Jisung’s hair playfully. The boy giggles at the roughhousing. “If only. Father’s put plenty an obstacle in my path.”

Jisung pats his own hair down flat. The sunlight frames his adorable little face so delightfully. “Well, you’re the Crown Prince, are you not? Just move them.”

“Well,” Johnny says, suppressing laughter at his brother’s naive optimism. He almost wants to tell Jisung that it is not quite the way the world works, that absolute power always outweighs less power, that even the Crown Prince of Echovia cannot just take what he wants - but he also figures it best that Jisung look at life this rosy for just a little while longer. “I never thought of it that way.”

“That’s awfully silly of you,” Jisung proclaims. His fist curls even tighter around the jarred magic. “All you ever need to do is ask.”

“And ask nicely, right?” Johnny squeezes Jisung’s shoulders, pressing him into his chest.

Jisung giggles. “Always ask nicely! That’s what Madame Kim tells me.”

Johnny chuckles, closing his eyes and feeling the sunshine on his face. He thinks and he thinks, about that looming white tower, about the white-haired boy locked away in it. He thinks about what Jisung said, about the Crown Prince only needing to ask, and how he so wishes it were that easy. The world in the palm of his hands - is it a power Johnny thinks he could handle, a power he would even want? His chest feels heavy with burden at just the thought.

“Madame Kim is right,” Johnny says, a little too soft, a little too late. But Jisung doesn’t seem to notice his hesitation.

And it’s a hesitation that lasts the rest of the afternoon, through dinner, and well into the evening. Johnny ponders on Jisung’s words. The words of a child, but a wise child nonetheless. 

He stands at the windows in his sleeping quarters, looking out at where the sun kisses the horizon before tucking itself away for the night. He gazes down the cliffside whereupon the palace proudly sits, down, down, down to where waves crash about so far away. He watches the water beat against the earth and he cannot hear it. Something so violent, an unignorable force, yet undetected to those who aren’t searching for it.

He wonders what’s happening up in that tower.

With a defeated, somewhat nervous sigh, Johnny snatches a cloak from his wardrobe and closes the door behind him. 

His steps are heavy, concentrated, and he strides through his halls as he wraps his cloak over his shoulders with a determined set in his brow and jaw. He steps through the shadows and the spots of light the moon casts through the windows, painting the marble a pale, cold gray.

The halls are not empty. Handmaidens and guards are scattered about the area, keeping watch or fiddling about their tasks. They pay him little mind, however, beyond brief nods and a quick bow of their heads. Johnny, typically, would greet them with a smile and a how-do-you-do. Tonight, however, he has his mind set on one thing and one thing only-

That room at the very top of the Southern white tower.

Through the winding halls and down too many stairs, Johnny makes his way out of his quarters, through the palace, and onto the palace grounds outdoors. He by-passes garden gates and weaves through stone paths, past the barracks, the courtyard, the Servant’s Quarters. The moon, tonight, is brilliant and proud - days away from being full. Her watchful gaze makes Johnny’s heart yearn. Ache.

Nights are still cool, as this spring continues on. The crisp night air bites pinkness into Johnny’s cheeks, the tip of his nose. It makes his fists curl up in the pockets of his cloak, his shoulders hike up to his ears as he storms through the palace grounds. Southward, Southward, and Southward some more.

When he arrives at the foot of that paramount tower, he’s met with the confused and concerned furrow of the guard’s brow. 

“Kang,” Johnny says, before the guard can even greet him. He realizes, now, that he’s out of breath. “I know your instructions-” he pauses to note the other guards moving in from their posts around the tower. “I know what the King has asked of you. But I’ve come to wield my own power and beg of you to allow me passage.”

There’s a subtle twitch in the guard’s expression. He shifts a little on his feet. “Your Highness, do not- do not feel as though you must beg me.”

“Then I simply ask.”

The line of Sir Kang’s mouth is taut, as he glances around him at the other guards who remain a polite distance away. He looks back at Johnny, his face blanketed in eventide shadows. “The- The King has stated that the Ilunae is dangerous and the experiments are not to be interrupted.”

“It is nearing midnight,” Johnny states. “Are there any experiments being run right now?”

“Well,” Johnny can tell that Sir Kang is running out of arguments, “n-no. But…”

“Then I no longer ask,” Johnny says. He allows his chest to fill with air and his voice to lower to that octave used when he begins to lose his patience with the knights in training. “I demand it.”

Jisung’s small yet assured voice rings between Johnny’s ears. He supposes he’s asking nicely enough. And he knows- he knows full well that he does wield enough power as the Crown Prince over his subjects, despite all of them being under his father’s rule. He isn’t blind to the respect he has from his peers and those beneath him, the way the Royal Guard love and respect him, as do the people beyond the palace walls. 

He knows, and perhaps he has known all along, that all he has to do is politely demand. No one tells a Crown Prince  _ no.  _

“Be gone before morning, Your Highness,” the guard says, stepping aside to push open the heavy wooden door. “Your father, the medics, they are never to know.”

“Of course,” Johnny says, relief rushing out from the center of his chest and into his release of breath. He falls into step, just barely making it through the threshold before he turns to meet Kang’s worried gaze. “Thank you. Anything you can ask of me, I will make it happen for you.”

There’s a moment where Kang seems to process this, his mouth agape around words that don’t come out. Then, “Alright, Your Highness.”

And the door closes between them.

Johnny turns around to face the darkness. Wall-mounted torches light the way in scattered spots, dangerously narrow, railless, winding stairs that build endlessly up, up the length of this wretched old tower. His neck aches from tilting back in a strained effort to see the top.

He grabs a torch from the wall, figuring there is no time to second guess himself, now. No time to turn back. No  _ way  _ he could ever turn back, now that Taeyong is so near. These flights upon flights of perilous stairs are reduced to nothing, when placed between Taeyong and himself. 

So, he climbs. The heat of the torch he holds before him warms his face and drains his breath. He climbs, his heart beginning to race from both exertion and excitement, and above all, nerves. He climbs, his thighs beginning to burn and his frown deepening and his concerns growing. He climbs, terrified of what may await him at the peak. Just what it is he might see.

Breathless, Johnny’s chest begins to feel triumphant at the sight of a rooftop above him. He’s made it- he’s finally made it. And the face that meets him at the top of the stairs is one he’s relieved to see.

“Johnny?”

“Yukhei!” Johnny beams. He heaves forward, his free hand secured on his knee as he catches his breath. “Oh, I’m so glad it’s you up here.”

“John- what are you doing up here? Did you just  _ run  _ all the way up here?”

Johnny straightens his back, looking his friend in the eye. He beams, bright. “I did. I’d like to get in there.”

The young guard gapes, a moment, clearly still catching up with what’s unfolding before him. He looks Johnny up and down, the sweat on his brow and the heave in his chest. “Uh,” Yukhei says, reaching back for the handle on the door that leads to the cells. “Sure, yes. Did you really run all the way up here?”

Johnny is just about to step past Yukhei and reach for the door himself, but he pauses to properly look at his friend. It’s the polite thing to do. Yukhei stands there, his long limbs and his wide, dark eyes, so confused by Johnny’s unannounced, graceless arrival. That look in his eyes, barely visible in the dim light of the torches, makes Johnny laugh a little.

“Yes, Yukhei, I guess I did,” Johnny says, glancing over his shoulder and down the cliffside of stairs. “I came to see Taeyong.”

“Oh,” Yukhei says, and his face splits into a grin the size of the sea. “About time.”

The door creaks with agony as it opens.

Johnny barely remembers to thank Yukhei before he barges through the threshold into a large, dark room. It’s cold up here, so damp and frigid with pane-less windows and drafts in the stone. It feels, almost, as if the ground is shifting beneath Johnny’s feet, complaining. The heavy door slams shut behind him.

The room is large, and dark, but the small, ceiling-adjacent windows provide enough moonlight that Johnny can take account of his surroundings. A cot, to his left, surrounded by work tables and equipment that Johnny is a little terrified to learn their capabilities. It’s such a jarring, ghastly sight, messy and scattered and a preview into what occurs during the day.

To his right. To the right are cell bars, blocking off a banal corner of a prison cell. Nothing but stone and mildew.

Curled up on the pathetic wooden bench that passes for a bed is Taeyong. His silver hair catches in the minuscule beam of moonlight that bleeds in, his chest rises and falls with slumbersome breaths.

“Taeyong!” Johnny says, lunging over to the cell. His hands find purchase around the bars, gripping so hard his knuckles turn white. “Taeyong, I’m here!”

The lump on the bench stirs, confused and disgruntled. Johnny watches his bony shoulders shift as he pushes himself up, rubbing at his groggy face. His hair sticks up on one side, endearing despite how dirty it appears to be.

Taeyong’s demeanour shifts entirely, the second he realizes what woke him. He bolts off of the bench, his nebulous eyes wide with excitement, not a single thing about him indicating he had just been asleep. He collapses to his knees with an audible noise, the second he reaches the bars, and Johnny falls to his level, reaching for his friend.

He is so cold to the touch. Johnny is almost afraid there is no life within him at all.

“Oh, Taeyong,” Johnny breathes out, breathless and excited and  _ anxious,  _ his curious hands roving over Taeyong’s skinny arms, his shoulders, his face, taking count of every part of him to make sure it isn’t missing. “Taeyong, I’m so sorry.”

Tears immediately well up in Taeyong’s bug eyes, his face twisting up. “Youngho, you- you lied to me.”

Johnny’s heart falls into the deepest pit of his stomach. He frowns, guilty, watching Taeyong’s face contort around his tears in the meager moonlight. There’s something dripping, in a corner of the room somewhere, these hollow walls reverberating every minuscule sound. His hands remain wrapped tight around Taeyong’s biceps, unable to part from him, unable to look away from the way his eyes shine so bright, even in this uncuttable darkness.

“I know, I- I’m so sorry, I should have told y-”

“A Prince, Youngho!” Taeyong’s voice is little more than a shaky, angry puff of breath. “A  _ Crown Prince,  _ the direct descendant of the men who killed my family!”

Johnny’s mouth hangs open a moment. “I know,” he says. And because he cannot say it enough times to make it any less true, “I’m sorry.”

Taeyong’s fists uncurl from where they had found purchase in Johnny’s cloak, tipping his face down to bury his tears in his hands and shake some more. “I’m so- I’m so happy to see you.”

Johnny’s heart is gone from him, at this point. Completely shattered and void from his body. “I’m so goddamn foolish,” he whispers. “I’ve left you alone to suffer.”

Even with the decaying, uncomfortable bars between them, they reach for each other and pull each other in for an embrace. Like this, Taeyong feels somewhat warmer, but still, he’s so cold and damp like the room that surrounds them. He shivers and shudders in Johnny’s hold, and Johnny doesn’t think he could ever squeeze Taeyong tight enough to bring the warmth back to his veins.

“Here,” Johnny says, pulling back to unclasp his cloak. “Take this, keep it with you for the nights. Hide it from prying eyes.”

Taeyong accepts the cloak through the bars with unsure fingers, brow furrowed in slight confusion. “I- I cannot hide something like this. There’s nowhere to hide it and my- my magic has become… weaker.”

Anger curls in Johnny’s belly. “For tonight then,” he says. “Please, you must be so cold.”

“Thank you,” Taeyong’s voice is diluted to something so minuscule, as he wraps the cloak around his shoulders and seems to shrink into the fabric. “Thank you.”

“And this,” Johnny says, perking up as he remembers something else. He reaches for his neck, pulling the twine over his head and holding the little jar through the barrier. “Can you hide this?”

A knobby hand reaches out from under the cloak, and Taeyong’s eyes stay wide and his jaw clenched tight as he nods.

“You need this more than I do, right now,” Johnny says.

Taeyong says nothing, and Johnny takes the opportunity to get a good, studious look at him. His eyes, so wide and bright yet so sallow and sunken with an exhaustion that sleep cannot fix. He has always been thin, wiry at best, but something about the way he sits on the damp stone ground, curled up beneath Johnny’s cloak, makes him appear so feeble, so emaciated. His lips are chapped and bitten raw, his milky white skin nearly gray in his paleness.

Johnny reaches out, tucks some of Taeyong’s hair behind his ear, shorter and jagged, like it was chopped off in a rush, without any care. “They cut your hair.”

“They did,” Taeyong says, eyes drifting from the ground and up to meet Johnny’s eyes. “They wanted some for their research.”

Johnny hears, as well as feels, his jaw clench up tight. His hand comes to a halt, cradling the back of Taeyong’s neck. “What else have they taken from you?”

“Plenty,” Taeyong states, simple and quiet. He chews on his lip some more, and Johnny resists the urge to reach out and free his bottom lip with his thumb. “It is… dehumanizing. Treated as a tool for the sake of research, but…”

He trails off, and Johnny waits. Without his cloak on, the cold seeps into him straight down to his spine, his soul. It makes his mouth feel dry and his muscles feel stiff, the cold from the hard, stone floor soaking through his trousers and into the rest of his skin, his jaw beginning to shiver, his shoulders subconsciously curling in.

He watches Taeyong curl further into the heavy fabric of the cloak, watches him grip that sealed magic a little tighter. His lashes dampen, once again, with tears that begin to spill from his eyes.

“What’s worse is- all that time spent all alone. So many years, Youngho. And then suddenly I was with a friend, a- a partner, of sorts.”

Johnny, despite himself, can feel the tears begin to bite at the backs of his eyes. He reaches through the bars, beneath the cloak, until he finds Taeyong’s hands wrapped around the jar, and squeezes.

“I was no longer alone. After  _ so long,  _ Youngho, so long I’ve been acquainted with loneliness. I was so-” he crumbles, pausing to swallow the lump in his throat. Johnny reaches out with his other hand, lets go of Taeyong’s and cradles his perfect face in his palms, wipes the fallen tears from his hollow cheeks with gentle thumbs. “I was so  _ happy.  _ And then it was…  _ ripped.  _ Away from me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Taeyong, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s so painfully quiet in this cell, so terribly  _ empty,”  _ Taeyong sobs.  _ Oh,  _ how he sobs and how Johnny cries with him. “Goddess forbid I no longer be lonely.”

“I wish,” Johnny says, “Oh, how I wish I could change this. How I wish I could- if only there was a way I could get you out of here and away from this.”

Oh, how he wishes.

Taeyong’s hands come up to cover Johnny’s, still holding his face like the most fragile piece of ornate, imported glass. Priceless and irreplaceable. 

“I promise,” Johnny says, sure and confident through the quiver in his voice, “to never abandon you, again. I promise, Taeyong. I will never, ever leave you like this. Never again.”

The smile Johnny receives is not one that brings warmth or relief. Taeyong’s smile is crooked and saddened and shattered by weeks of abuse and abandonment. Johnny wants to hold him forever.

“Oh, Youngho,” Taeyong breathes. “Don’t you go and make promises you cannot keep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always:
> 
> [Twitter](Twitter.com/bbhsteeth/) | [Curious Cat](CuriousCat.me/bbhsteeth/) | [Ko-Fi](Ko-if.com/laurenandrea/)


	5. The sun may set, but the moon still shines so bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are looking pretty dim.
> 
> Then it brightens, once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. Another month between updates. I gotta stop picking up overtime at work (crying emojis)
> 
> Chapter 5 is a bit shorter, but we’re getting some Plot in motion, babey!! Hope you guys enjoy :)

Dinner with the Royal Family is always such a sordid affair.

There is far too little of them, for a table so large and meals so bountiful. They all sit so far apart, lit only by meager candles and the scarce light of evening sun, the four of them more or less just waiting for the meal to be over so they can leave. This is not a family, no more than a unit. Because, despite Johnny’s unconditional and insurmountable love for his brothers, sitting with the King turns everyone into the boys they were sitting with their tutors all over again - save for Jisung, who is still that boy - sitting proper and perfectly postured, nothing more than amicable and professional in every way.

If they find something too funny, they get scolded for laughing and goofing around at the dinner table. If they pick at their food too much they get reprimanded for not being grateful for the food prepared for them. If they tune out their father’s heinously boring droning about his painfully uninteresting life, they get something worse than a scold or a slap on the wrist - they get cold, cold silence.

“It’s about time we get you fitted for some new armour, isn’t it, boy?” The King asks around a mouthful of turkey leg. Johnny does his best not to sneer at the sight.

The question is directed at the middle child, Minhyung, who sits hunched over his plate with wide eyes. His raven hair is shiny, fluffy like it’s just been cleaned. “Y-yes, sir. It’s becoming difficult to move in my current set.”

“Ah, what a fine job I have done,” the King says with a haughty grin. He glances between Minhyung and Johnny. “Such fine, strong men the two of you have grown to be.”

Johnny nearly argues. He almost bites back like the way they’ve grown has  _ anything  _ to do with the King’s hand, and not to do with the staff and maiden’s that taught them how to live, beyond their mother’s departure from the living world. 

He knows his father is a respected, good King. He’s solid at his duties, he’s smart with decisions even under the most pressuring circumstances. He reeks power and garners respect and admiration. Johnny is not blind - he knows his father is a decent King, besides a few tendencies that some may find unethical. But, Gods, if he isn’t a terrible father. And one who thinks he’s done well, at that.

Instead of arguing, Johnny turns to fix Jisung with a smile. “And you’re next on the roster, aren’t you, peanut?” He wants to reach out and ruffle Jisung’s hair, but this table is too large for four men and he’s out of arm’s reach. “You’re already getting too tall for my liking.”

Minhyung snorts, his eyes glittering as he meets Jisung’s gaze. “It won’t be long until you will be taller than me! Looks as though you’ve taken after Johnny.”

Jisung giggles, and he looks as though he’s about to say something when the king clears his throat. All eyes turn to him as he takes a dramatic sip from his goblet. Johnny is way too tired to deal with his father this evening.

“I’m sure you boys are aware that the grand hall is undergoing some renovations. Jisung, my boy, I want you to stay away from there while they are under construction, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good.”

For a little while after that, the King rambles on and on about what changes are being made to the grand hall. He discusses possibly hosting a ball once the construction is complete, a chance to show off the new decorum and, most importantly, a chance to build relations with the neighbouring Kingdoms.

Johnny pays little attention. He hears him, and he nods and hums along. Mostly, he watches the sun set through the windows, watches the sky turn from blue to blush to a crystal clear gray. His knee bounces beneath the table and he barely tastes his food, his body exhausted and his mind utterly distracted.

For three nights in a row, Johnny has snuck up into the tower and sat with Taeyong until the wee hours of the morning. Now that he’s opened that door and allowed himself the power to see him, Johnny hasn’t missed a night. He brings Taeyong blankets and warm bread, and he holds Taeyong’s cold hands and listens to him talk about his days. No matter how painful it is to hear.

It costs him his energy and his patience. Johnny spends his days tired and sore from spending his nights sitting on damp, stone floors and getting such pitiful amounts of sleep. He spends his days watching the sun cross the sky and taps his foot and waits, waits, waits until it’s time that everyone departs to their chambers for the night, so he can sprint to the Southern tower and up those treacherous stairs.

His thighs have been sore from exertion for days.

“Oh, John,” the King says, drawing Johnny’s attention away from the window, “I have been in correspondence with Lord Guanling from the Liu Empire. His daughter has just celebrated a birthday, making her of age to marry.”

Johnny does not like where this is going. “I am sure she will find a suitor in no time.”

“Well,” the King says, turning his nose up a bit. “It  _ is  _ about time that you find yourself a bride, make yourself some sons. You’re old enough, now, John, it’s a matter of time before you’ll regret not producing any heirs.”

Adjacent to Johnny, Minhyung’s thin eyebrows shoot up his forehead, effectively uncomfortable with the topic of conversation. Jisung, across from Minhyung, looks rightfully confused. Johnny, however, feels disgusted.

It feels wrong to him, to discuss marriage like it is nothing more than a means to have sons that will someday rule. It feels wrong to him, to discuss Lord Liu’s daughter like she is nothing more than a vessel to produce heirs - especially when the last time Johnny saw her, a number of years ago, she was a meager thirteen years old. It does not matter to him that she’s become an adult; he has no interest in a girl so wide-eyed and freshly grown, still so entirely unsure of what her life could possibly amount to.

“I intend to live a long and happy life, with someone I truly care about,” Johnny responds, carefully. “Someone I love, as you loved my mother.”

Something softens, in the King’s expression. It is something close to understanding, as Johnny had hoped to draw out of him when he mentioned the late Queen. Still, despite the softness in the King’s eyes, he says, “She is a pretty one, that Liu girl.”

“Last I saw her, she was a child,” Johnny says, finite. “So, I have no opinion on the matter.”

The King merely nods, tense in the jaw but something swimming deeper in his eyes, thoughtful and pensive, as he tends to get when he is reminded of his wife. “Right. Will you be having dessert with us, tonight, John?”

Johnny puts down his knife and fork, and his stomach leaps with anticipation. “No, thank you,” he says. “I wish to be excused.”

\-----

Yukhei, as always, is waiting for Johnny at the top of the stairs.

“Evening, Your Highness,” he says with his signature Yukhei grin - all wide corners crinkled eyes. “You’re early, tonight.”

Johnny smiles, reaching into the basket he has slung over his elbow to pull out a roll, still hot and fresh from the oven (Johnny has developed a habit of schmoozing with the palace cooks when the sun goes down). “A bun for your troubles?”

Yukhei takes it, tosses it in the air once before catching it and taking a massive bite. “Thanks, Johnny!”

Johnny laughs with a shake of his head, and before he even has to ask, Yukhei reaches back to open the door for him. He doesn’t even have time to step through the door before Taeyong is calling out-

“Youngho?”

“Hey,” Johnny says lowly, briskly making his way over to the bars where Taeyong sits. “Hey, you probably shouldn’t do that until you see me. Just in case someone else comes up and wonders why you’re asking for me.”

When he meets Taeyong’s eyes, he falters. Taeyong looks… especially worn out today, his eyes wide and glassy and red-rimmed. He drops to his knees, pulling a blanket out of the basket and passing it through the gap in the bars. Taeyong takes it with jittery fingers.

“Taeyong, are you- are you alright?”

It takes a beat for Taeyong to respond. He stops staring into space long enough to meet Johnny’s gaze with a nod. “Tired, today. And hungry.”

“Here,” Johnny says, fervent and suddenly full of worry. He takes a roll out from the basket and passes it to Taeyong. “Chew it slowly. You look like you’ve been starved.”

Taeyong takes a hesitant bite. He nods, minutely, chewing slowly on the bread and burrowing further into the blanket draped around his shoulders. “It was a long day today.”

As it always does when Johnny pays Taeyong a visit, his heart positively breaks. It pains him to see Taeyong like this. Stripped so bare he’s essentially nothingness, just sharp corners beneath threadbare clothes. Johnny watches him eat with a furrow in his brow and a sadness in his belly, watches how Taeyong’s eyes remain vacant and his hands cannot still. 

Taeyong finishes his roll, so Johnny pulls out another.

“Do you want to tell me about your day?” Johnny asks, voice whisper-soft and gentle. He feels like a sound too loud might cause Taeyong to shatter, so he just breathes in the space between them, relies on the stone walls to resonate the sound into something clearer. Taeyong just blinks, frowning as he chews on his second roll. “Or would you rather I start?”

“Yeah,” Taeyong says, his frown deepening. “I just- wanna hear your voice for a bit.”

Johnny reaches through the bars to find Taeyong’s hand. He winds their fingers together and softly, the way he reads his baby brother a story, he tells Taeyong all about his day. He starts with when he woke up, to how his knights behaved for him at the barracks today, to council meetings and dinner with his father. He talks about what the weather was like outside today, since Taeyong hasn’t seen the sky in weeks. He talks about the tulips that have bloomed and are beginning to wilt, always such a short-lived beauty.

Eventually, he runs out of things to say. He reaches his free hand out, brushes some of Taeyong’s dirty hair off his face and tucks it behind his ear. “I wish I knew where the keys to this cell were,” he murmurs. “Then I could sneak you down these stairs and let you have a nice, warm bath. Lavender and all.”

Taeyong hums, and his smile is sad and wistful. “If only.”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“Better, now that I’ve eaten,” Taeyong replies. Johnny’s stomach churns at the cruelness of it all, letting this poor man rot up here with no food, no bath. “My body feels… conflicted. The full moon is coming, yet I am so drained of all my magic. All my strength.”

Johnny brushes a thumb over the hollow, bluish circles beneath Taeyong’s magnificent eyes. They look at each other a moment, and Johnny savours the way Taeyong’s expression has settled into something so warm and soft, despite the misery he’s been wallowing in. 

“Do they know? About what happens to you on a full moon?” 

Taeyong shakes his head, subtly, under Johnny’s touch. “No, no. And they- they are not to disturb me that day, either. They said they’ll be too busy preparing the rituals and readying themselves for nightfall to conduct any studies.”

Relief rushes out of Johnny as a release of bated breath. “Good. Good.” He rests his palm flat against Taeyong’s cheek and smiles as the Ilunae subconsciously leans into the warmth of his touch. “You deserve a day off. I wish I could come see you, but…”

“I understand.”

“I wish there was more I could do.”

A moment of heavy silence lingers between them. They just sit there, with Taeyong’s face cradled in Johnny’s open palm, their hands tangled together, yet with what feels like an entire Kingdom between them. Johnny hears the scurrying footsteps of a rodent somewhere in a dark corner, the steady  _ drip, drip, drip  _ of a leak, somewhere. He watches Taeyong’s eyelashes flutter against the paper-thin flesh of his cheekbones.

“I know you do. I know you wish.”

Johnny swallows, unable to tamp down the agony in his chest.

Taeyong continues, “I wish, too.”

\-----

After a full moon spent busy and restless, seemingly never-ending and painfully exhausting, Johnny has an afternoon off, the day after. He finds himself walking through the gardens, along carefully constructed stone paths, his hands clasped politely behind his back, his best friends on either side. He listens to their familiar voices, laughs along when the moment is right. Mostly, he just enjoys their company, as distracted as he is.

He’s thinking about Taeyong - always thinking about Taeyong. He has not seen him in a couple of days, and he hopes that he is doing well. That he rested well, yesterday and last night.

“You know,” Jaehyun says, pausing briefly to tug on a branch, inspect the blooming blossoms at eye level, “I’ve heard that the Liu empire has joined military forces with Revaria. I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s making my father anxious.”

“Huh,” Johnny huffs, shifting his weight onto his heels as he thinks. “That explains why my father is so insistent that I meet with their duchess.”

Jaehyun’s eyes widen, shock and curiosity - and of course, amusement - poised upon his handsome face. He frees the branch, and it bounces back up into place, as Jaehyun scratches at the mop of curly brown hair on his head. “No way. Isn’t she, like, sixteen?”

“Apparently, has just turned eighteen,” Johnny says with a sneer. He catches Doyoung’s quiet snort to his left. “Still, seven years my junior is far too young.”

“The King must be nervous, about the strength of the combined kingdoms,” Doyoung eventually chimes in, his melodic voice carrying over the gentle spring breeze. Jaehyun and Johnny look at him, then fall into step when Doyoung continues their walk. “He seems to be making a lot of defensive decisions lately.”

“Speaking of which,” Johnny says, “has he had any luck replacing you as Hunters’ Captain, yet?”

_ That  _ makes Doyoung’s head swing back with a full belly-laugh. The kind that makes his mouth open big and wide, his giant gummy smile and perfectly square teeth on full display. Johnny smiles fondly, in his amusement, and hears Jaehyun snicker a little bit on his right, clearly more up-to-date on the situation than Johnny is.

“He’s fresh out of options, Johnny,” Doyoung says, shaking his head. “My dad’s anxious that His Majesty will try to coax him out of retirement, just to replace his very own son. Luckily, he pulls enough rank to be able to refuse.”

Johnny rolls his eyes, mouth curled up in amusement. “It’s about time he just sends you back out at full rank, again. That squad needs you in charge.”

Doyoung’s bright eyes sparkle in the afternoon sunlight. “Ah, title or not, I’m still in charge of that squad. No one has questioned otherwise.”

Johnny nods, his eyes crinkling up. He would expect nothing less.

They walk a little while longer, long enough that the sun begins to get too hot for the fabric of Johnny’s tunic. He sees Jaehyun and Doyoung pulling at their own collars, too, none of them expecting such bright, warm weather. Eventually, they find themselves settled on a beautifully crafted wood bench, one that sits in the shadows between two trees and is in the perfect spot to catch the breeze off the pond. They sit, and they listen to the frogs croak and the birds chirp. And Johnny thinks he would love to take Taeyong here.

“You know,” Jaehyun pipes up after quite some time of amicable silence, “I’m a bit curious about your moonchild friend.”

It’s difficult to ignore the fluttering in his tummy. Johnny feigns nonchalance. “What is it you wish to know?”

  
  


“I do not know,” Jaehyun says, slowly, thoughtfully. “I’m just… curious.”

“What he means to say,” Doyoung says, “is that you’ve been awfully cryptic about him.”

“Have not! You lot have just never asked.”

Doyoung, whose head is tipped back against the backrest of the bench, squints one eye open at Johnny, incredulously. “Then tell us everything about him. You have seen him, haven’t you?”

“I- well-” Johnny starts, stops, starts again. His mouth flaps about a bit, unsure what to say or where to begin. Just how much he’s willing to share. And he gathers, reluctantly, that his friends may have a point. “I have, yes.”

“How is he doing?”

Johnny turns to meet Jaehyun’s curious gaze. “Awful.” It breaks his heart to say it, but he cannot lie. Not even to himself. “They’ve taken everything from him and still ask for more. I- I am not sure how much longer he can remain up there, hungry and cold. He’s hardly eating and yet they still draw his blood and cut his hair and weaken his magic.”

“Does he bleed silver?” Doyoung asks.

Johnny sighs. “He does.” It’s more like moonlight, but Johnny decides not to correct him. “And while I understand that it’s fascinating, and he could…  _ help,  _ you know? But- but just do it under better circumstances.”

Jaehyun’s warm palm lands on Johnny’s knee. His eyes swim with sympathy. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I know how much you worry.”

“You worry an awful lot,” Doyoung says. “This poor moonchild better be worth it.”

“He is,” Johnny says, tone serious and finite. He feels the skin between his brows pinch together. “Taeyong is.”

“I would like to meet him, one day,” Jaehyun says, softly. Johnny turns to look at him, sees him watching the lily pads and the ripples in the pond, face scrunched up with contemplation. “Since you like him so much, I- I think it would be nice to meet him.”

“You would adore him,” Johnny’s words gush out of him, overflowing and eager. He feels like he’s speaking gospel, hallowed truths. “I have never met anyone with more goodness within them. He is so spectacular, so beautiful and kind.”

“ _ Ohh, _ boy, Johnny,” Doyoung says through an amused groan. “You should hear yourself.”

Johnny’s expression drops, and he looks wide-eyed between his two friends. Doyoung still has his eyes closed, but his mouth is curled up in a knowing sort of mischief. Jaehyun looks somewhere between shocked and ready to burst into laughter.

“Do I sound like a fool?” Johnny asks.

Jaehyun pats his knee. “The very worst kind.”

\-----

Johnny’s muscles ache in his sides and his arms as he swings the heavy metal of his sword about, salty droplets of sweat are bleeding in through his eyelashes, and the sun is far too hot on the back of his neck, heat seeping under the weight of his chainmail and soaking his flesh. Still, Johnny cannot, or the life of him, stop smiling. His cheeks hurt with it, and through his laboured breaths he wheezes out hearty laughter with every swing. Every swing that’s met with a  _ CLANG  _ of Minhyung’s sword against his. 

Shields remain poised and at the ready, arms relentless in their brutal swings at one another. They crack jokes and they laugh, yet still spar as though they’re rivals with intent to kill. Johnny does not think there’s a better way to spend an afternoon with his younger brother.

“Gods almighty,” Johnny laughs out during a brief pause. He swings. It clangs against Minhyung’s shield. “You are getting too big! It used to be much easier to beat you.”

Minhyung beams at him, all pearly white teeth that come to rounded points. He laughs, raising his arm for a cross-hit. Johnny meets his sword with his shield. “Maybe-” he grunts out as he swings his sword with full might “-you’re just getting-  _ HGH!  _ Getting old.”

Johnny laughs, and just hardly misses Minhyung’s next swing. “You might be onto something.”

His laugh melts away into a huff of breath as he dodges a slice from Minhyung, kicking up dirt beneath his feet. He grins, painfully, and fights even moreso.

It’s funny to him because, in just about every sense, Johnny  _ does  _ feel as though he’s getting old. Especially here, face-to-face with Minhyung, his head finally up to Johnny’s ears, his shoulders wider, his swing stronger. He’s a mere few months away from adulthood, and then it’s only another year before he’s being appointed the name the Vanguard Priest chose for him. 

_ Mark.  _ Johnny thinks it suits his brother, direct and simple. There’s a sort of kindness to the name, Johnny feels, not quite as stuffy and stiff as the name  _ John.  _ Though, Johnny has come to love his name over the years, after hearing the name carried atop his friend’s voices, after it moulded into a soft and lighthearted  _ Johnny.  _ He hopes Mark likes the name he will adopt. He wonders if anyone has asked him.

He wonders how King Saul feels about his name. Johnny does not even know what name he was born with.

In his distraction and his wandersome mindset, Minhyung seizes the opportunity to press the flat side of his sword to the left of Johnny’s neck. He grins through damp bangs and heaving breaths at him, proud and triumphant. Johnny smiles back.

“Got me,” he pants. Minhyung only smiles wider.

They roll their shoulders, shake out their limbs. It goes unsaid, but both Johnny and his brother seem to agree that it’s time to wrap it up, drink from their canteens and catch their breaths. They wander over to the edge of the open, packed dirt of the sparring court, where a few bodies are scattered about the benches that are so unfortunately situated right in the hot sun.

As they approach, Johnny spots Ten lounging on the bench, his feet up and his face tilted toward the sunlight that beams down on him. He’s talking to Jaehyun, who stands on the other side of the wooden guardrails, leaning his forearms atop the planks and chattering on about something that Ten seems to be hardly listening to. The sight makes Johnny smile.

“Boys,” he says, still catching his breath. He reaches for his canteen and knocks it back.

“Johnnyboy,” Ten says with a smile, his chin tilting down so he can look at Johnny and Minhyung. “And Junior, too!”

“Come to watch practice?” Johnny asks, grabbing his rag he had left aside to dab at the back of his neck. He shoots Jaehyun a smile and receives one in return.

“Oh, you know,” Ten says, returning to his position as a cat lying in the sun, “just wasting time.”

“You should probably get cleaned up, the both of you,” Jaehyun says, regarding Johnny and Minhyung. “Father just swung by, says his Majesty is expecting us in the throne room as quickly as we can.”

Johnny frowns, takes another swig of his water. “Any indication what it’s about?”

Jaehyun just shakes his head and shrugs. 

With that, the group of them split up to change out of their armour and prepare themselves to meet with the King. Save for Ten, of course, who remains lounging back in the sun and occasionally watching the knights spar about the ring. Johnny makes quick work of it, dressing himself and scrubbing the sweat off of his forehead before he finds Jaehyun and, together, they head for the center of the palace.

Just as they’re approaching the doors to the throne room, they meet up with Minhyung, tailed closely by Kunhang - who is to Minhyung what Jaehyun is to Johnny. 

“Afternoon,” Johnny greets, and Kunhang smiles back.

“You’ve got some dirt on your nose.”

“Ah, well,” Johnny says, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his neck. He knows he’s still filthy, still smells with the exertion of training in the late-spring sun. He’ll have time to bathe, later. “Thought it looked great with my outfit.”

Kunhang just nods, that shit-eating grin ever plastered on his face in full force. “Good one.”

Without another word, they all step forward to push through the heavy wooden doors and into the throne room. It’s never anything new - it is a room that each of them are all well acquainted with, having lived their whole lives on palace grounds. They walk along mulberry wine carpet and past the eyes of guards that line the walls. His father waits for them at the far end of the room, seated on his ornate throne. His attention is swallowed up by a scroll that he holds in his lap, frowning as he reads whatever is on the page. He doesn’t even notice them until they’re right at the very foot of his platform, taking a knee.

“Ah, gentlemen,” he says, rolling the scroll back up and putting it aside. “Please, stand.”

They do. Johnny’s body groans a little bit, exhausted from sparring earlier. He thinks about what Minhyung said about him getting old and has to stifle his grin.

“Why have you summoned us, today, your Majesty?” Johnny asks, eager to get on with it. His father just smiles proudly.

“I’ve caught wind of this place, this- village, of sorts. Nestled in the very bosom of the forest,” the King begins, rising from his throne to pace the platform. The four of them just watch him, waiting patiently for him to get to his point.

He continues, “what I’ve been told, about this little woodland area, is that they have harnessed magic and gained the forest’s favour.”

The King pauses. He pauses long enough, looking down at Johnny and the others, that Johnny figures he must be waiting for someone to engage, to speak up. With an inward sigh, Johnny says, “And what reason is there for us to know?”

“Excellent question, my boy,” he responds, carrying on with his pacing. “I can only imagine, the longer this place practices magic, improves their magic, earns even more of the forest’s favour- well, over time, it would only make sense that something like that would become a threat to our Kingdom, no?”

Johnny’s back teeth grind with the clench of his jaw. These words feel awfully familiar.

“I simply want to send some eyes,” the King continues. “I want a small group of people to go, stay there, learn their ways. I want to know what kind of power they may yield.”

Johnny’s brows pinch, just as Minhyung speaks up, “You want to send spies?”

The King’s smile is rancidly sweet. “Why, yes, that is the best way to describe it, I figure. I would like for you boys to recruit a small team of men, those you deem best fit for travel through that perilous forest. Stay there for a little while, earn their trust.”

It’s like the strike of a match, the realization in Johnny, and he jumps to act on it before he even thinks.

“Taeyong must come.”

There is an ugly silence in the room. The King cocks and eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

Johnny takes a breath, counts to five. “The Ilunae is not only in touch with magic, having the forest’s favour and may relate to the people of this… village, you speak of. But he’s spent a century in that forest. He knows it better than I know our full moon hymns. He would be beneficial to the team.”

He can feel it, the searing of Jaehyun’s gaze into the side of his face. Kunhang and Minhyung, too. Johnny pays them no mind, however, just holds his father’s gaze and watches the thoughts brew behind crow’s feet and furrowed brows.

Then, unexpectedly, “Very well. Do not be mistaken, John, I am well aware of your ulterior motives, here.”

Johnny’s stomach churns with anxiety.

“But, regardless of your intentions, you do make a strong point. The Ilunae shall join you on this quest.”

The churning turns into butterflies, rattling his stomach with excitement. Finally, a glimmer of hope, an out for Taeyong. Some reprieve from this Hell in which he has been living.

“Then, the experiments are to yield,” Johnny says. He’s surprising even himself with his firmness, his finality. He speaks to his King as if there is no room for debate, no power imbalance whatsoever. “If he is to join us, he should be gathering his energy. I can- I can only imagine what the experiments are taking out of him. He’d be useless to us if he joins us emaciated and exhausted.”

His father, unsurprisingly, looks remarkably unimpressed. It’s evident that this tastes bitter on the King’s tongue, but although the King may not like it, Johnny is still right. About everything. And fighting back would be fruitless.

“Yes, John. We will allow him a few days rest.”

“With meals.”

A sigh. “Yes, of course, John.”

They continue to discuss their plan of action. Questions are asked and plans are made, but Johnny pays very little attention. All he thinks about is Taeyong, up in that tower, left to rest and recuperate amongst a few nights’ peace. It makes something heavy and unseen lift from the middle of Johnny’s chest, something weighing down his arms and drooping his sturdy shoulders. He takes a heavy breath, and finds, for the first time in a while, it does not feel trapped inside his ribs.

They wrap things up with a, “Go on, men,” and a, “advise of your recruits by tomorrow evening.”

Johnny doesn’t look behind him to see if the other three are keeping up as he departs from the throne room and back to his chambers.

\-----

That nightfall, after Johnny has bathed and eaten and fidgeted as he watches the clock, he heads out toward the Southern tower for the first time since the full moon. The air is less chilly, tonight, as time herself creeps closer to the summer. It bites less at the flesh of his cheeks as he speeds along winding paths in the gracious cloak of dim moonlight, Southward.

It has become routine. The guards no longer question his presence. Yukhei is always there to mooch a bun off of him. Besides Doyoung, Yukhei was the first person the four of them had thought to invite on the quest at hand. He had accepted it, naturally, with an ecstatic grin. Always an ecstatic grin.

Once Yukhei has been thoroughly bribed with a roll and some small talk, Johnny makes his way into the prison room, ever-so damp and still chilly, besides the warming weather. Taeyong waits for him at the edge of the cell, peering through the bars.

“What is going on, Youngho?” Taeyong asks, in lieu of a greeting. He reaches through the bars to accept the bread and the blanket that Johnny hands to him, a well-rehearsed practice. “This afternoon, some guard came in and spoke with the medics, then… everyone just left.”

“I come bearing good news,” Johnny says, unable to tamp down his smile. He ruffles his hands through Taeyong’s hair. It has been cut again, this time more even and less hastily, shoddily done. He still desperately needs a bath, however. “You will not be disturbed or a handful of days.”

Taeyong’s wide eyes widen further. The sleepless-punched bruises beneath his eyes are less prominent, Johnny notes, less sunken and sallow. He must have slept the afternoon away, when the air is its warmest and most comfortable. Johnny takes note of every knob and corner of Taeyong’s body, bundled beneath that blanket. His shirt hangs low and threadbare, exposing his bony chest and the jar that dangles from twine. 

“How did you manage that? Does your King have no issue with this?” Taeyong asks around a fluffy mouthful of bread. 

Johnny smiles, endeared at Taeyong’s cheeks all puffed out as he chews. “He’s assigned us a project, you see. Me and my brother and our friends- we are to head into the forest to find this village. Apparently they have harnessed magic.”

“Oh,” Taeyong says, apprehensive. His chewing slows, as he ponders this information, tries to decipher what that has anything to do with him. “You- you are not going there to harm them, right?”

Johnny’s eyes widen, his hand reaching through the bars to find Taeyong’s knee. “Oh, no no! We are just going to learn about them and report our findings back in a few months’ time.”

Something like relief melts Taeyong’s hardened features. “Okay. Okay. So… why have my experiments stopped? Just yesterday they were sticking leeches to my limbs to see if they would drink and today I napped in the afternoon sun. I’m a little confused, Youngho.”

Johnny pauses, an awful feeling catching in his throat. He decides not to dwell on what Taeyong had just said, unwilling to begin unravelling that tapestry quite yet, unwilling to learn every detail of what happens in this room. He’s afraid it would eat him up entirely, if he did.

So, instead, he just says, “You’re coming with us!”

“Huh?”

“I’ve convinced my father that you would be helpful. You know magic, you know the forest. You’re inarguably the strongest and most capable of us all. He’s given permission to allow you rest and recovery.”

Taeyong gapes, his jaw flapping about as he processes it all. He reaches into the basket for another roll, a contemplative divot between his tilted eyebrows. Johnny just waits, watches the galaxy glimmer in Taeyong’s irises and the moonlight cast shadows beneath the sharpest point of his jaw, the dip between his collarbones. Taeyong thinks and thinks, and Johnny sits and waits.

“I- I’m grateful for the reprieve, Youngho, but I do not think I could possibly do that King of yours any favours.”

The sharpness of Taeyong’s tongue makes Johnny grin. “Understandable. Truly. He has done nothing to deserve your servitude, I know this. But, Taeyong… you get to leave this place. You get to come with me and my friends who will love you and we will get away from this place for  _ months.  _ Months, Taeyong, months away from my father’s gaze and the medic’s touch.”

There’s something similar to resignation in the collapse of Taeyong’s chest and shoulders, the tilt of his chin. Still, he says nothing, so Johnny decides to continue.

“Tomorrow I will send guards up with a change of clothes and a basin with warm water and lavender. Any bath oil of your choosing. Along with a feast fit for five men and blankets of the finest wool, I’ll ensure it, I’ll demand it.”

“Goddess, Youngho,” Taeyong says with a laugh. His face opens up, brightens to the shine of a full, proud moon. “Enough, enough!”

Vehemently, Johnny shakes his head. “Never enough. Never enough for you.”

Taeyong just stares back, bewildered and amused. His cheeks have dusted themselves with the pink of a gentle sunrise, his chapped bottom lip bitten between his eager teeth. He shakes his head, sighing, then reaches out to cradle Johnny’s face.

“Of course I’ll come with you, Johnny. If only to spend some time away with you.”

Johnny, oddly, feels as though he could burst into tears. He’s so excited, so happy and relieved, he feels as though he could explode with it all.

“My friends are going to love you,” he says through a painfully wide grin. Taeyong’s fingers dig into his cheeks, as if willing his smile to shrink. “I promise, you will fit right in.”

Taeyong’s sigh is laced with something saccharine, but something apprehensive, too.

“Oh, you silly young man,” he says, like the century-old being he is. “Your blind hopefulness may be your most glaring flaw. But I think it may be my favourite thing about you.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know where to find me!
> 
> [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/bbhsteeth/) | [CuriousCat](https://www.curiouscat.me/bbhsteeth/) | [Ko-Fi](https://www.ko-fi.com/laurenandrea/)

**Author's Note:**

> Uh oh.
> 
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